WITH   GRENFELL  ON  THE 
LABRADOR 


■WV.  OF  CALIF.  LIBRARY.  LOS  ANGELES 


DR.   GRENFELL,  A.B. 
(Three  ratlins  were  broken  on  the  ascent). 


WITHGRENFELL  ON 
THE  LABRADOR 


BY 
FULLERTON  L.  WALDO 


ILLUSTRATED 


New  York  Chicago 

Fleming  H.  Revell  Company 

London  and  Edinburgh 


Copyright,  1920,  by 
FLEMING  H.  REVELL  COMPANY 


New  York:  158  Fifth  Avenue 
Chicago:  17  North  Wabash  Are. 
London :  21  Paternoster  Square 
Edinburgh :    75    Princes    Street 


DORIS  KENYON 

OF 

COMPANY  L.,   307th  INFANTRY. 
77th   DIVISION; 

HONORARY  SERGEANT.  U.SJV. 


21333S2 


FOREWORD 

Aboard  the  Strathcona, 
Red  Bay,  Labrador,  Sept.  9,  19 19. 
Dear  Waldo  : 

It  has  been  great  having  you  on  board  for  a 
time.  I  wish  you  could  stay  and  see  some 
other  sections  of  the  work.  When  you  joined 
us  I  hesitated  at  first,  thinking  perhaps  it  would 
be  better  to  show  you  the  poorer  parts  of  our 
country,  and  not  the  better  off — but  decided  to 
let  you  drop  in  and  drop  out  again  of  the 
ordinary  routine,  and  not  bother  to  *  show  you 
sights.'  Still  I  am  sorry  that  you  did  not  see 
some  other  sections  of  the  people.  There  is  to 
me  in  life  always  an  infinite  satisfaction  in 
accomplishing  anything.  I  don't  care  so  much 
what  it  is.  But  if  it  has  involved  real  anxiety, 
especially  as  to  the  possibility  of  success,  it 
always  returns  to  me  a  prize  worth  while. 

Well,  you  have  been  over  some  parts,  where 
things  have  somehow  materialized.  The  rein- 
deer experiment  I  also  estimate  an  accom- 
plished success,  as  it  completely  demonstrated 
our  predictions,  and  as  it  is  now  in  good  hands 
7 


8  FOREWORD 

and  prospering.  The  Seamen's  Institute,  in 
having  become  self-supporting  and  now  de- 
manding more  space,  has  also  been  a  real  en- 
couragement to  go  ahead  in  other  lines.  But 
there  is  one  thing  better  than  accomplishment, 
and  that  is  opportunity;  as  the  problem  is 
better  than  the  joy  of  writing  Q.  E.  D. 

So  I  would  have  liked  to  show  you  White 
Bay  as  far  as  La  Scie,  where  our  friends  are 
fighting  with  few  assets,  and  many  discourage- 
ments. It  certainly  has  left  them  poor,  and 
often  hungry  and  naked,  but  it  has  made  men 
of  them,  and  they  have  taught  me  many  les- 
sons; and  it  would  do  your  viewpoint  good  to 
see  how  many  debts  these  people  place  me 
under. 

If  life  is  the  result  of  stimuli,  believe  me  we 
ought  to  know  what  life  means  in  a  country 
where  you  are  called  on  to  create  every  day 
something,  big  or  small.  On  the  other  hand, 
if  life  consists  of  the  multitude  of  things  one 
possesses,  then  Labrador  should  be  graded  far 
from  where  I  place  it,  in  its  relation  to  Phila- 
delphia. 

A  thousand  thanks  for  coming  so  far  to 

give    us    your    good    message    of    brotherly 

sympathy. 

Yours  sincerely, 

Wilfred  T.  Greicfell. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER 

Foreword,  by  Doctor  Grenfell  :. 

PAGE 

7 

I 

"Doctor''    ...,., 

15 

II 

A  Fisher  of  Men 

27 

III 

At  St.  Anthony 

39 

IV 

All  in  the  Day's  Work  . 

S3 

V 

The  Captain  of  Industry 

78 

VI 

The  Sportsman  .       .       .       , 

97 

VII 

The  Man  of  Science 

106 

VIII 

The  Man  of  Law 

114 

IX 

The  Man  of  God 

119 

X 

Some  of  His  Helpers 

130 

XI 

Four-Footed  Aides:  Dogs  ani 
Reindeer 

3 

.        139 

XII 

A  Wide,  Wide  "  Parish  "  . 

.       150 

XIII 

A  Few  "  Parishioners  "  . 

•        173 

XIV 

Needs,  Big  and  Little     . 

.        183 

Fnm  "AMONG  THE  DEEP  SE/I  FISHERS-  Br  Courlrsy  oj  The  Grenjill  Aiioiiaum  0/  Amiri 


c 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


VACING 
FAGK 


Dr.  Grenfell,  A.B Title 

Fritz  and  His  Master      ....       38 

"Doctor" 38 

Battle    Harbour,    Spreading   Fish    for 

Drying 60 

"  Please  Look  at  My  Tongue,  Doctor  "      98 

"Next" 98 

Dr.  Grenfell  Leading  Meeting  at  Battle 

Harbour     ......     120 

St.  Anthony  Hospital  in  Winter     .       .134 

Some  of  the  Helpers       .       .       .        .134 

Signal  Hill,  Harbour  of  St.  Johns  .        .150 

Happy    Days    at    the    Orphanage    St. 

Anthony     .        .        .        .       ..       ,.     180 


" DOCTOR " 

GRENFELL  and  Labrador  are  names 
that  must  go  down  in  history  together. 
Of  the  man  and  of   his   sea-beaten, 
wind-swe^t  "  parish  "  it  will  be  said,  as  Kip- 
ling wrote  of  Cecil  Rhodes  : 

"  Living  he  was  the  land,  and  dead 
His  soul  shall  be#her  soul." 

Some  folk  may  try  to  tell  us  that  Wilfred 
Thomason  Grenfell,  C.M.G.,  gets  more  credit 
than  is  due  him:  but  while  they  cavil  and 
insinuate  the  Recording  Angel  smiles  and 
writes  down  more  golden  deeds  for  this  de- 
scendant of  an  Elizabethan  sea-dog.  Sir 
Richard  Grenville,  of  the  Revenge,  as  Tennyr 
son  tells  us — stood  off  sixty-three  ships  of 
Spain's  Armada,  and  was  mortally  wounded 
in  the  fight,  crying  out  as  he  fell  upon  the 
deck :  "I  have  only  done  my  duty,  as  a  man 
is  bound  to  do."  That  tradition  of  heroic 
devotion  to  duty,  and  of  service  to  mankind, 
is  ineradicable  from  the  Grenfell  blood. 
15 


16   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

"  We've  had  a  hideous  winter,"  the  Doctor 
said,  as  I  clasped  hands  with  him  in  June  at 
the  office  of  the  Grenfell  Association  in  New 
York.  His  hair  was  whiter  and  his  bronzed 
face  more  serious  than  when  I  last  had  seen 
him;  but  the  unforgettable  look  in  his  eyes 
of  resolution  and  of  self-command  was  there 
as  of  old,  intensified  by  the  added  years  of 
warfare  with  belligerent  nature  and  some- 
times recalcitrant  mankind.  For  a  few  mo- 
ments when  he  talks  sentence  may  link  itself 
to  sentence  very  gravely,  but  nobody  ever 
knew  the  Doctor  to  go  long  without  that 
keen,  bright  flash  of  a  smile,  provoked  by  a 
ready  and  a  constant  sense  of  fun,  that 
illumines  his  face  like  a  pulsation  of  the 
Northern  Lights,  and — unless  you  are  hard  as 
steel  at  heart — must  make  you  love  him,  and 
do  what  he  wants  you  to  do. 

The  Doctor  on  this  occasion  was  a  month 
late  for  his  appointment  with  the  board  of 
directors  of  the  Grenfell  Association,  His 
little  steamer,  the  Strathcona,  had  been  frozen 
in  off  his  base  of  operations  and  inspirations 
at  St.  Atithony.  So  he  started  afoot  for 
Conch  to  catch  a  launch  that  would  take  him 
to  the  railroad.  He  was  three  days  covering 
a  distance  which  in  summer  would  have  re- 


«  DOCTOR  "  17 

quired  but  a  few  hours,  in  the  direction  of 
White  Bay  on  the  East  Coast.  He  slept  on 
the  beach  in  wet  clothes.  Then  he  was  caught 
on  pans  of  ice  and  fired  guns  to  attract  the 
notice  of  any  chance  vessel.  Once  more 
ashore,  he  vainly  started  five  times  more  from 
St.  Anthony  harbour.  Finally  he  went  north 
and  walked  along  the  coast,  cutting  across 
when  he  could,  eighty  miles  to  Flower's  Cove. 
In  the  meantime  the  Strathcona,  with  Mrs. 
Grenfell  aboard,  was  imprisoned  in  the  ice  on 
the  way  to  Seal  Harbour;  and  it  was  three 
weeks  before  Mrs.  Grenfell,  with  the  aid  of 
two  motor-boats,  reached  the  railroad  by  way 
of  Shoe  Cove. 

At  Flower's  Cove  the  Doctor  rapped  at  the 
door  of  Parson  Richards.  That  good  man 
fairly  broke  into  an  alleluia  to  behold  him. 
With  beaming  face  he  started  to  prepare  his 
hero  a  cup  of  tea.  But  there  came  a  cry  at 
the  door:  "Abe  Gould  has  shot  himself  in 
the  leg! " 

Out  into  the  cold  and  the  dark  again  the 
Doctor  stumbled.  He  put  his  hand  into  the 
leg  and  took  out  the  bone  and  the  infected 
parts  with  such  instruments  as  he  had.  Then 
he  sat  up  all  night,  feeding  his  patient  sleep- 
ing potions  of  opium.     With  the  day  came 


18   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

the  mail-boat  for  the  south,  the  Ethie,  beaten 
back  from  two  desperate  attempts  to  penetrate 
the  ice  of  the  Strait  to  Labrador. 

Two  months  later  I  rejoined  the  Doctor  at 
Croucher's  wharf,  at  Battle  Harbour,  Labra- 
dor. 

The  little  Strathcona,  snuggling  against  the 
piles,  was  redolent  of  whalemeat  for  the  dogs, 
her  decks  piled  high  with  spruce  and  fir,  white 
birch  and  juniper,  for  her  insatiable  fires. 
(Coal  was  then  $24  a  ton.) 

"  Where' ve  you  been  all  this  time?"  the 
Doctor  cried,  as  I  flung  my  belongings  to  his 
deck  from  the  Ethie's  mail-boat,  and  he  held 
out  both  hands  with  his  radiant  smile  of  greet- 
ing. "  I'm  just  about  to  make  the  rounds  of 
the  hospital.  This  is  a  busy  day.  We  pull 
out  for  St.  Anthony  tonight!"  With  that 
he  took  me  straight  to  the  bedside  of  his 
patients  in  the  little  Battle  Harbour  hospital 
that  wears  across  its  battered  face  the  legend : 
*'  Inasmuch  as  ye  did  it  unto  one  of  the  least 
of  these  my  brethren  ye  did  it  unto  me." 

The  first  man  was  recovering  from  typhoid, 
and  the  Doctor,  with  a  smile,  was  satisfied  with 
his  convalescence. 

The  next  man  complained  of  a  pain  in  the 
abdomen.    Dr.  Grenfell  inquired  about  the  in- 


«  DOCTOR  "  19 

tensity  of  the  pain,  the  temperature,  the  ap- 
petite and  the  sleep  of  the  patient. 

"He  has  two  of  the  four  cardinal  symp- 
toms," said  the  Doctor,  "pain  and  temper- 
ature. Probably  it's  an  appendical  attack. 
We  had  a  boy  who — like  this  man — ^looked 
all  right  outwardly,  and  yet  was  found  to  have 
a  bad  appendix." 

The  Doctor  has  a  way  of  thinking  aloud  as 
he  goes  along,  and  taking  others  into  his  con- 
fidence— frequently  by  an  interrogation  which 
is  flattering  in  the  way  in  which  he  imputes 
superior  knowledge  to  the  one  of  whom  the 
question  is  asked.  It  is  a  liberal  education  in 
the  healing  craft  to  go  about  with  him,  for  he 
is  never  secretive  or  mysterious — he  is  frankly 
human  instead  of  oracular. 

"  How  about  your  schooner  ? "  was  his  next 
question.  "Do  you  think  that  they  can  get 
along  without  you  ?  " 

He  never  forgets  that  these  are  fishermen, 
whose  livelihood  depends  on  getting  every 
hour  they  can  with  their  cod-traps,  and  the 
stages  and  the  flakes  where  the  fish  is  salted 
and  spread  to  dry. 

The  third  patient  was  a  whaler.  He  had 
caught  his  hand  in  a  winch.  The  bones  of  the 
second  and  third  fingers  of  the  right  hand 


20   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

were  cracked,  and  the  tips  of  those  fingers  had 
been  cut  off.    The  hand  lay  in  a  hot  bath. 

"  Dirty  work,  whaling,"  was  the  Doctor's 
comment,  as  he  examined  the  wound. 
"  Everything  is  rotten  meat  and  a  wound 
easily  becomes  infected." 

Number  four  was  a  baffling  case  of  multiple 
gangrene.  This  Bonne  Bay  fisherman  had  a 
nose  and  an  ear  that  looked  as  if  they  had 
turned  to  black  rubber.  His  toes  were 
sloughing  off.  The  back  of  his  right  hand 
was  like  raw  beef.  His  left  leg  was  bent  at 
an  angle  of  90  degrees,  and  as  it  could  not 
bear  the  pressure  of  the  bedclothes  a  scaffold- 
ing had  been  built  over  it.  The  teeth  were 
gone,  and  when  the  dressings  were  removed 
even  the  plucking  of  the  small  hairs  on  the 
leg  gave  the  patient  agony. 

"What  have  you  been  eating?" 

"  Potatoes,  sir." 

"What  else?" 

"  Turnips,  sir." 

"  You  need  green  food.  Fresh  vegetable 
salts." 

The  Doctor  looked  out  of  the  window  and 
saw  a  dandelion  in  the  rank  green  grass. 
"That's  what  he  ought  to  have,"  was  his 

comment. 

/ 


«  DOCTOR  "  21 

On  the  verandah  were  four  out-of-door 
patients  to  whom  fresh  air  was  essential.  One 
had  a  tubercular  spine.  A  roll  of  plaster  had 
been  coming  by  freight  all  summer  long  and 
was  impatiently  awaited.  But  a  delay  of 
months  on  the  Labrador  is  nothing  unusual. 
Dr.  Daly,  of  Harvard,  presented  the  Strath- 
cona  with  a  searchlight,  and  it  was  two  years 
on  the  way — most  of  that  time  stored  in  a 
warehouse  at  North  Sydney. 

Around  these  fresh-air  cases  the  verandah 
was  netted  with  rabbit-wire.  That  was  to  keep 
the  dogs  from  breaking  in  and  possibly  eating 
the  patients,  who  are  in  mortal  terror  of  the 
dogs. 

When  the  Doctor  took  a  probe  from  the 
hand  of  a  trusted  assistant  he  was  careful  to 
ask  if  it  was  sterile  ere  he  used  it.  He  con- 
stantly took  his  juniors — in  this  instance, 
Johns  Hopkins  doctors — into  consultation. 
"What  do  you  think?"  was  his  frequent 
query. 

The  use  of  unhallowed  patent  medicines 
gave  him  distress.  "  O  the  stuff  the  people 
put  into  themselves!"  he  exclaimed. 

"  Have  we  got  a  Dakin  solution  ?  "  he  asked 
presently. 

"  We've  been  trying  to  get  a  chloramine  so- 


22   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

lution  all  summer,"  answered  one  of  the  young 
physicians. 

The  Doctor  made  a  careful  examination  of 
the  man  with  the  tubercular  spine,  who  was 
encased  in  plaster  from  the  waist  up.  "  After 
all,"  was  his  comment  as  he  rose  to  his  feet, 
"doctors  don't  do  anything  but  keep  things 
clean." 

In  the  women's  ward  the  Harris  GDt,  the 
Torquay  Cot,  the  Northfield  Cot,  the  Victoria 
Cot,  the  Kingman  Cot,  the  Exeter  Cot  were 
filled  with  patient  souls  whose  faces  shone  as 
the  Doctor  passed.  "More  fresh  air!"  he 
ejaculated,  and  other  windows  were  opened. 
Those  who  came  from  homes  hermetically 
sealed  have  not  always  understood  the  Doc- 
tor's passion  for  ozone.  One  man  complained 
that  the  wind  got  in  his  teeth  and  a  girl  said 
that  the  singing  on  Stmdays  strained  her 
stomach. 

He  had  a  remarkable  memory  for  the  his- 
tory of  each  case.  "The  day  after  you  left 
her  heart  started  into  fibrillation,"  said  an 
assistant.  "  It  was  there  before  we  left," 
answered  the  Doctor  quietly. 

At  one  bedside  where  an  operation  of  a 
novel  nature  had  been  performed  he  remarked, 


"DOCTOR"  23 

"  I  simply  hate  leaving  an  opening  when  I 
don't  know  how  to  close  it." 

He  never  pretends  to  know  it  all :  he  never 
sits  down  with  folded  hands  in  the  face  of  a 
difficulty  or  "  passes  the  buck "  to  another. 
In  his  running  commentary  while  he  looks  the 
patient  over  he  confesses  his  perplexities.  Yet 
all  that  he  says  confirms  rather  than  shakes 
the  patient's  confidence  in  him.  Those  whom 
he  serves  almost  believe  that  he  can  all  but 
raise  the  dead. 

"  Now  this  rash,"  he  said,  "  might  mean 
the  New  World  smallpox — but  probably  it 
doesn't.  We've  only  had  two  deaths  from  that 
malady  on  the  coast.  It  ran  synchronously 
with  the  *  flu.'  In  one  household  where 
there  were  three  children  and  a  man,  one 
child  and  the  man  got  it  and  two  children 
escaped  it. 

**  This  woman's  ulcers  are  the  sequel  to 
smallpox.  She  needs  the  vegetable  salts  of  a 
fresh  diet.  How  to  get  green  things  for  her 
is  the  problem.  And  this  patient  has  tuber- 
cular caries  of  the  hip.  The  X-ray  apparatus 
is  across  the  Straits  at  St.  Anthony,  sixty  miles 
away.  If  we  only  had  a  portable  X-ray 
apparatus  of  the  kind  they  used  in  the  war? 


24   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

Now  you  see,  no  matter  what  the  weather,  this 
woman  must  be  taken  across  the  Straits  be- 
cause we  are  entirely  without  the  proper  ap- 
pliances here." 

Screens  were  put  around  the  cots  as  the 
examination  was  made,  so  that  the  others 
wouldn't  be  harrowed  by  the  sight  of  blood 
or  pain. 

The  sick  seemed  to  find  comfort  merely  in 
being  able  to  describe  their  symptoms  to  a 
wise,  good  man.  Much  of  the  trouble  seemed 
actually  to  evaporate  as  they  talked  to  him. 
Miss  Dohme  and  the  other  nurses  kept  the 
rooms  spotlessly  clean,  and  gay  bowls  of 
buttercups  were  about. 

"  I  don't  feel  nice,  Doctor,"  said  the  next 
woman.  "  Some  mornings  a  kind  of  dead, 
dreary  feeling  seems  to  come  out  of  me  stum- 
mick  and  go  right  down  me  laigs.  Some- 
times it  flutters;  sometimes  it  lies  down.  The 
wind's  wonderful  strong  today,  and  it's 
rising." 

Usually  the  diagnosis  is  not  greatly  helped 
by  the  patient,  who  meekly  answers  the  ques- 
tions with  "  Yes,  Doctor,"  or  "  No,  Doctor," 
or  describes  the  symptoms  with  such  poetic 
vagueness  that  a  great  deal  is  left  to  the 
imagination.     It  takes  patient  cross-question- 


"DOCTOR"  25 

ing — in  which  the  Doctor  is  an  adept — to  elicit 
the  truth. 

Here  is  a  dear  little  baby,  warmly  muffled, 
on  the  piazza  with  the  elixir  of  the  sun  and  the 
pine  air.  The  pustular  eczema  has  been 
treated  with  ammoniate  of  mercury — but  what 
will  happen  when  the  infant  goes  home  to  the 
old  malnutrition  and  want  of  sanitation?  If 
only  the  Doctor  could  follow  the  case ! 

Bathtubs  are  a  mystery  to  some  of  the  pa- 
tients, who  after  they  have  been  undressed 
and  led  to  the  water's  edge  ask  plaintively, 
"  What  do  you  want  me  to  do  now  ?  " 

So  many  times  in  this  little  hospital  one  was 
smitten  by  the  need  of  green  vegetables  which 
in  so  many  places  are  not  to  be  had — 
"greens"  (like  spinach),  lettuce,  radishes  and 
the  rest. 

As  we  came  away  the  Doctor  spoke  of  the 
feeling  that  he  used  to  have  that  wherever  a 
battle  for  the  right  was  on  anywhere  he  must 
take  part  in  it.  "  But  I  have  learned  that  they 
also  serve  who  simply  do  their  duty  in  their 
places.  These  dogs  hereabouts  seem  to  think 
they  must  go  to  every  fight  there  is,  near  or 
far.  But  none  of  us  is  called  upon  to  do  all 
there  is  to  do.  I  often  read  of  happenings  in 
distant  parts  qi  the  earth  and  feel  as  though 


26   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

I  ought  to  be  there  in  the  thick  of  things. 
Then  I  realize  that  if  we  all  minded  our  own 
business  exactly  where  we  are  we'd  be  doing 
well.  And  when  such  thoughts  come  to  me  I 
just  make  up  my  mind  to  be  contented  and  to 
buckle  down  to  my  job  all  the  harder." 


II 

A  FISHER  OF  MEN 

THAT  evening  Dr.  Grenfell  spoke  in 
the  little  Church  of  England,  taking  as 
his  text  the  words  from  the  twelfth 
chapter  of  John :  "  The  spirit  that  is  ruling  in 
this  world  shall  be  driven  out."  Across  the 
tickle  the  huskies  howled  at  the  moon,  and  one 
after  another  took  up  the  challenge  from  either 
bank.  But  one  was  no  longer  conscious  of  the 
wailful  creatures,  and  heard  only  the  speaker; 
and  the  kerosene  lamps  lighted  one  by  one  in 
the  gloom  of  the  church  became  blurred  stars, 
and  the  woman  sitting  behind  me  in  a  loud 
whisper  said,  "  Yes !  yes ! "  as  Dr.  Gren- 
fell, in  the  earnest  and  true  words  of  a  man 
who  speaks  for  the  truth's  sake  and  not  for 
self's  sake,  interpreted  the  Scriptures  that  he 
has  studied  with  such  devotion. 

"  When  I  was  young,"  he  said,  "  I  learned 
that  man  is  descended  from  a  monkey,  and  I 
was  told  that  there  is  no  God. 

"  When  I  became  older  and  did  my  own 
27 


28   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

thinking  I  refused  to  believe  that  God  chose 
one  race  of  mankind  and  left  the  rest  to  be 
damned. 

"  No  one  has  the  whole  truth,  whether  he 
be  Church  of  England,  Methodist  or  Roman 
Catholic. 

"  The  simple  truth  of  Christianity  is  what 
the  world  needs.  How  foolish  seem  the  tinsel 
and  trumpery  distinctions  for  which  men 
struggle!  What  is  the  use  of  being  able  to 
string  the  alphabet  along  after  your  name? 
Character  is  all  that  counts. 

"  Some  say  that  religion  is  for  the  saving 
of  your  soul.  But  it  is  not  a  grab  for  the 
prizes  of  this  world,  and  the  capital  prize  of 
the  life  eternal. 

"  The  things  the  world  holds  to  be  large, 
Christ  tells  us,  are  small.  Jesus  says  the 
greatest  things  are  truth  and  love. 

"  Love  is  so  big  a  thing  that  it  forgets  self 
utterly. 

"  How  many  of  us  know  what  it  is  to  love? 
It  is  not  mere  animal  desire. 

"If  we  all  truly  loved,  what  a  world  it 
would  be! 

"  Suppose  a  doctor  loved  all  his  patients. 
He  wouldn't  be  satisfied  then  to  say :  *  Your 
leg  is  better,*  or  '  Here  is  a  pill/ 


A  FISHER  OF  MEN  29 

"  Suppose  a  clergyman  loved  his  people. 
He  wouldn't  say :  *  I  wonder  how  many  in  this 
congregation  are  Church  of  England.' 

"  God  Himself  is  love  and  truth.  Jesus 
lived  the  beautiful  things  He  taught.  He  was 
them. 

"  Every  man  has  something  in  him  that 
forces  him  to  love  what  is  unselfish  and  true 
and  altogether  lovely  and  of  good  report. 

"  In  the  war,  in  the  midst  of  all  the  horror 
and  the  terror  and  the  pity  of  it,  a  noble  spirit 
was  made  manifest  among  men — a  heroic 
spirit  of  self-control  and  a  sense  of  true 
values. 

"  If  I  couldn't  have  a  palace  I  could  have 
a  clean  house;  if  I  couldn't  speak  foreign 
languages  I  needn't  speak  foul  language.  We 
may  be  poor  fishermen  or  poor  London  doc- 
tors :  we  can  serve  in  our  places,  and  we  can 
let  our  lives  shine  before  men.  If  I  have 
done  my  duty  where  I  am,  I  don't  care  about 
the  rest.  I  shall  not  care  if  they  leave  my 
old  body  on  the  Labrador  coast  or  at  the  bot- 
tom of  the  Atlantic  for  the  fishes,  if  I  have 
fought  the  good  fight  and  finished  the  course. 
Having  lived  well,  I  shall  die  contented." 

As  soon  as  the  service  in  the  church  was 
over  a  meeting  was  held  in  the  upper  room  of 


30   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

the  hospital.  The  room  was  filled,  and  Dr. 
Grenfell  spoke  again.  Before  his  address 
familiar  hymns  were  sung,  and — noting  that 
two  of  those  present  had  violins  and  were  ac- 
companying the  cabinet  organ — he  referred  to 
their  efforts  in  his  opening  words. 

"  We  all  have  the  great  duty  and  privilege 
of  common  human  friendliness,"  he  said. 
"  We  may  show  it  in  the  little  things  of  every 
day.  For  everybody  needs  help,  everywhere. 
There  is  no  end  to  the  need  of  human  sym- 
pathy. It  may  be  shown  with  a  fiddle — or 
perhaps  I  ought  to  say  *  violin '  (apologizing 
to  a  Harvard  student  who  was  officiating). 

"  I  have  always  loved  Kim  in  Kipling's  story 
of  that  name.  Kim  is  just  a  waif.  Nobody 
knows  who  his  father  is;  but  he  is  called 
*the  little  friend  of  all  the  world.* 

"  There  is  a  book  which  has  found  wide 
acceptance  called  *  Mrs.  Wiggs  of  the  Cabbage 
Patch.'  Mrs.  Wiggs  lived  in  a  humble  cot- 
tage with  only  her  cabbage  patch,  but  every- 
body came  to  her  for  sunshine  and  healing. 
She  had  plenty  of  troubles  of  her  own,  but 
just  because  she  had  them  she  knew  how  to 
help  others.  Whoever  we  are,  whatever  we 
are,  we  may  wear  the  shining  armour  of  the 
knights  of  God:  there  is  work  waiting  for 


A  FISHER  OF  MEN  31 

our  hands  to  do,  there  is  good  cheer  for  us 
to  spread." 

Dreamer  and  doer  live  side  by  side  in  amity 
in  Dr.  Grenfell's  make-up.  At  the  animated 
dinner-table  of  the  nurses  and  the  doctors  in 
the  Battle  Harbour  hospital,  after  asking-  a 
blessing,  hd  was  talking  eagerly  about  the 
League  of  Nations,  the  industrial  situation  in 
England  and  America  and  the  future  for 
Russia  while  brandishing  the  knife  above  the 
meat  pie  and  letting  no  plate  but  his  own  go 
neglected. 

Dr.  Grenfell  is  happy  and  his  soul  is  free 
at  the  wheel  of  the  Strathcona.  That  wheel 
bears  the  words,  "  Jesus  saith,  Follow  me  and 
I  will  make  you  fishers  of  men."  At  the  peak 
of  the  mainmast  is  likely  to  be  the  blue  pen- 
nant bearing  the  words,  "  Grod  is  Love."  The 
Strathcona  is  ketch-rigged.  Her  mainmast, 
that  is  to  say,  is  in  the  foremast's  place;  and 
above  the  mainsail  is  a  new  oblong  topsail  that 
is  the  Doctor's  dear  delight.  The  other  sail 
has  above  it  a  topsail  of  orthodox  pattern,  and 
there  are  two  jibs.  So  that  when  she  has 
her  full  fuel-saving  complement  of  canvas 
spread,  the  Strathcona  displays  six  sails  at 
work.  Could  the  Doctor  always  have  his  way, 
all  the  sails  would  be  up  whenever  a  breeze 


32   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

stirs.  With  a  good  wind  the  ship  is  capable 
of  eight  knots  and  even  more  an  hour:  five 
knots  or  so  is  her  average  speed  under  steam 
alone.  In  the  bow,  his  paws  on  the  rail,  or 
out  on  the  bowsprit  sniffing  the  air  and  seeing 
things  that  only  he  can  see,  is  the  incompar- 
able dog  Fritz — Fritz  of  "  57  varieties  " — 
brown  and  black,  like  toast  that  was  burned 
in  the  making.  No  one  knows  the  prevailing 
ancestry  of  Fritz,  but  a  strain  of  Newfound- 
land is  suspected.  He  will  take  a  chance  on 
swimming  ashore  if  we  cast  anchor  within 
half  a  mile  of  it,  though  the  water  is  near 
congealment,  and  he  knows  that  a  pack  of  his 
wolfish  brethren  is  ready  to  dispute  the  shore- 
line with  him  when  he  clambers  out  dripping 
upon  the  stony  beach  with  seaweed  in  his 
hair.  When  he  swims  back  to  the  ship  again 
his  seal-like  head  is  barely  above  the  waves 
as  he  paddles  about,  a  mute  appeal  in  his 
brown  eyes  for  a  bight  of  rope  to  be  hitched 
about  his  body  to  help  him  aboard. 

Dr.  Grenfell  keeps  unholy  hours,  and 
dawn  is  one  of  his  favourite  out-door  sports. 
He  may  nominally  have  retired  at  twelve — 
which  is  likely  to  mean  that  he  began  to  read 
a  book  at  that  hour.  He  may  have  risen  at 
twO;  three  and  four  to  see  how  the  wind  lay 


A  FISHER  OF  MEN  33 

and  the  sea  behaved :  and  perhaps  five  o'clock 
will  find  him  at  the  wheel,  bareheaded, 
the  wind  rufiling  the  silver  locks  above  his 
ruddy  countenance,  his  grey-brown  eyes — 
which  are  like  the  stone  labradorite  in  the 
varying  aspects  they  take  on — watching  the 
horizon,  the  swaying  bowsprit,  the  compass, 
and  the  goodness  of  God  in  the  heavens. 

The  Doctor  is  a  great  out-of-doors 
man.  He  scorns  a  hat,  and  in  his  own 
element  abjures  it  utterly.  He  wears  a  brown 
sweater,  high  in  the  neck,  and  above  it  he 
smokes  a  briarwood  pipe  that  is  usually  right 
side  up  but  appears  to  give  him  just  as  much 
satisfaction  when  the  bowl  is  inverted.  The 
rest  of  his  costume  is  a  symphony  of  grey  or 
brown,  patched  or  threadbare  but  neat  always, 
ending  in  boots  high  or  low  of  red  rubber  or 
of  leather. 

You  may  think  that  the  dog  Fritz  out  on 
the  bowsprit  is  enjoying  all  the  morning  there 
is,  but  the  Doctor  is  transformed. 

"  I  love  these  early  mornings,"  he  says— 
and  he  is  innocent  of  pose  when  he  says  it: 
it  is  not  a  mere  literary  emotion.  "  It's  a 
beautiful  sight  in  autumn  with  the  ice  when 
the  banks  are  red  with  the  little  hills  clear- 
cut  against  the  sky  and  the  sea  a  deep,  deep 


34   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

blue.     Isn't  it  a  beautiful  world  to  live  in? 
Isn't  it  fun  to  live?" 

You  have  to  admit  that  it  is. 

"  A  man  can't  think  just  of  stomachs  all 
the  time.  Sometimes  I  have  to  go  away  for 
a  day  or  two.  But  I  can't  say  when  I've 
ever  been  tired. 

"  A  great  little  ship  she  is.  She  is  very 
human  to  me.  She  has  done  her  bit — she 
has  carried  her  load.  On  that  small  deck  and 
down  below  we  once  took  56  Finns  from  the 
wreck  of  the  Viking  off  Hamilton  Inlet.  Wa 
had  nothing  but  biscuit  and  dry  caplin  on 
which  to  feed  them.  Once  we  were  caught  in 
a  storm  with  seven  schooners.  We  had  60 
fathoms  out  on  two  chains  for  our  anchors. 
Six  of  the  other  seven  ships  went  ashore. 
Then  the  seventh  overturned — ours  was  the 
only  ship  that  stood.  All  of  a  sudden  our 
main  steampipe  burst.  We  had  to  use  cold 
sea-water.  It  was  a  hard  struggle  to  bring 
our  ship  into  shallow  water  at  i^  fathoms. 
Another  time  we  had  to  tow  19  small  boats 
at  once. 

"  We  always  have  something  up  our  sleeve 
to  get  out  of  trouble." 

Then  suddenly  spying  other  vessels  with 
their  sails  up,  Dr.  Grenfell  proceeds  to  study 


A  FISHER  OF  MEN  36 

them  for  a  lesson  as  to  the  way  his  own  ship 
is  to  take.  He  calls  out  to  Albert  Ash,  his 
pessimistic  mate,  "  She's  well-ballasted,  that 
two-master.  Have  those  others  tacked  ? " 
His  talk  runs  on  easily  as  he  swings  the  ship 
about  and  the  sails  are  bellying  with  a  favour- 
ing breeze.  "  This  wind'll  run  out  three  knots. 
I'm  cheating  it  up  into  the  wind.  We'll  let 
her  go  by  a  bit.  This  is  Chimney  Tickle  in 
here.  A  beautiful  harbour.  The  tide  and  the 
polar  current  meet  here.  It's  always  open 
water.  It's  the  place  they're  thinking  of  for  a 
transatlantic  harbour.  It's  only  1,625  niiles 
from  here  to  Gal  way.  The  jib  and  mainsail 
aren't  doing  the  work.  That  man  has  no  idea 
of  trimming  a  jib!"  He  rushes  out  to  the 
wheelhouse  and  does  most  of  the  work  of 
setting  the  mainsail  himself. 

"  I'm  so  fond  of  those  words  *  The  sea  is 
His,'  "  he  says,  coming  back  to  the  spokes 
again.  "  I  think  it  runs  in  the  blood.  I  like 
to  think  of  the  old  sea-dogs — like  Frobishcr 
and  Drake  and  Cabot.  Shackleton  told  Mrs. 
Grenfell  that  the  first  ship  that  came  to  Labra- 
dor was  named  the  Grenfell.'* 

*'  The  comings  and  goings  of  the  Strathcona 
mean  much  to  these  people,"  said  Dr. 
McConnell.      "At    Independence   a    woman 


36   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

met  us  on  the  wharf,  the  great  tears  rolling 
down  her  cheeks.  She  lost  her  husband  and 
her  son  in  the  *  flu  '  epidemic.  She  told  me  that 
her  son  said  to  her :  '  Mother,  if  Dr.  Grenfell 
were  only  here,  he  could  save  me.'  At  Snack 
Cove  the  people  went  out  on  the  rocks  and 
cried  bitterly  when  the  Strathcona  passed 
them  by — as  we  learned  when  to  their  great 
relief  we  dropped  in  upon  them  a  fortnight 
later." 

We  cast  anchor  at  Pleasure  Harbour  be- 
cause of  rough  weather  and  for  a  few  hours 
had  one  of  the  Doctor's  all  too  infrequent 
play-times,  while  waiting  for  the  Strait  to 
abate  its  fury  to  permit  of  a  possible  crossing. 

Here  a  delicious  trout  stream  tumbled  and 
swirled  from  sullen,  mist-hung  uplands  into  a 
piratical  cove  where  two  small  schooners 
swung  at  anchor.  Like  so  many  of  these 
places  the  cove  was  a  complete  surprise — you 
came  round  the  rock  with  no  hint  that  it  was 
there  till  you  found  it,  placid  as  a  tarn,  and 
deep  and  black,  with  big  blue  hills  stretching 
to  the  northward  beyond  the  fuzzy  fringes  of 
the  nearer  trees  and  the  mottled  barrens  where 
the  clouds  were  poised  and  the  ghosts  of  the 
mist  descended.  (A  tuneful,  sailor-like  name 
it  is  that  the  Eskimoes  give  to  a  ghost — the 


A  FISHER  OF  MEN  37 

"  Yo-ho " :  and  they   say  that  the   Northern 
Lights  are  the  spirits  of  the  dead  at  play). 

An  unhandy  person  with  a  rod,  I  was 
allowed  by  Dr.  Grenfell  and  Dr.  McConnell 
to  go  ahead  and  spoil  the  nicest  trout-pools 
with  my  fly.  Even  though  cod  fishermen  at 
the  mouth  of  the  stream  had  unlawfully  placed 
a  net  to  keep  the  trout  from  ascending,  there 
were  plenty  of  trout  in  the  brook,  and  in  the 
course  of  several  hours  forty-nine  were  good 
enough  to  attach  themselves  to  my  line.  The 
banks  were  soggy  under  the  long  green 
grass :  the  water  was  acutely  cold :  and  in  two 
places  there  were  small  fields  of  everlasting 
snow  in  angles  of  the  rock.  It  was  an  ideal 
trout-brook,  for  it  was  full  of  swirling  black 
eddies,  rippling  rapids,  and  deep,  still  pools. 
The  brook  began  at  a  lake  which  was  rough- 
ened by  a  wind  blowing  steadily  toward  us. 
Dr.  Grenfell  cast  against  the  wind  where  the 
lake  discharged  its  contents  into  the  brook, 
and  the  line  was  swept  back  to  his  boots. 
With  unwearying  patience  he  cast  again  and 
again,  and  while  I  strove  in  vain  to  land  a 
single  fish  from  the  lake  he  caught  one  monster 
after  another,  almost  at  his  own  feet.  All 
the  way  up  the  brook  he  had  successfully  fished 
in  the  most  unpromising  places,  that  we  had 


38   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

given  over  with  little  effort,  and  here  he  was 
again  getting  by  far  the  best  results  in  the  most 
difficult  places  of  all.  There  seemed  to  be  a 
parallel  here  with  his  medical  and  spiritual 
enterprise  on  the  Labrador.  He  has  worked 
for  poor  and  humble  people,  when  others  have 
asked  impatiently :  "  Why  do  you  throw 
away  your  life  upon  a  handful  of  fishermen 
round  about  a  bleak  and  uncomfortable  island 
where  people  have  no  business  to  live  any- 
way?" He  could  not  leave  the  fishermen's 
stage  at  the  mouth  of  the  brook  this  time 
without  being  called  upon  to  examine  a  fisher- 
man troubled  by  failing  eyesight.  On  the 
run  of  a  couple  of  hundred  yards  in  a  rowboat 
to  the  SfrathconC'  the  thunder-clouds  rolled  up, 
with  lightning,  and  as  we  set  foot  on  board 
the  deluge  came. 


Ill 

AT   ST.   ANTHONY 

NEXT  evening  found  us  at  St.  Anthony. 
Doctors  and  nurses  were  on  the  wharf 
to  greet  their  chief  after  his  absence 
of  several  weeks.  Dr.  Curtis  showed  the 
stranger  through  the  clean  and  well-appointed 
hospital,  with  its  piazza  for  a  sun-bath  and 
the  bonny  air  for  the  T.  B.  patients,  its  X-ray 
apparatus  and  its  operating  room,  its  small 
museum  of  souvenirs  of  remarkable  oper- 
ations. I  saw  Dr.  Andrews  of  San  Francisco 
perform  with  singular  deftness  an  operation 
for  congenital  cataract,  with  a  docile  little  girl 
who  had  been  blind  a  long  time,  and  whose 
sight  would  probably  be  completly  restored  by 
the  two  thrusts  made  with  a  needle  at  the 
sides  of  the  cornea.  Her  eyes  were  bandaged 
and  she  was  carried  away  by  the  nurse, 
broadly  smiling,  to  await  the  outcome.  Foi 
ten  years  or  so  this  noted  oculist,  no  longer 
young  except  in  the  spirit,  has  crossed  the 
continent  to  spend  the  summer  in  volunteer 
39 


40   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

service  at  St.  Anthony — a  fair  type  of  the 
men  that  are  naturally  drawn  to  the  work  in 
which  the  Doctor  found  his  life. 

One  of  the  St.  Anthony  doctors  visiting 
out-patients  came  upon  a  woman  who  was 
carefully  wrapped  in  paper.  This  explanation 
was  offered:  "If  us  didn't  use  he,  the  bugs 
would  lodge  their  paws  in  we."  "  Bugs"  are 
flies,  and  the  use  of  "  he  "  for  "  it "  is  char- 
acteristic. A  skipper  will  talk  about  a  light- 
house as  he,  just  as  he  feminizes  a  ship,  and 
the  nominative  case  serves  also  as  the 
objective. 

Another  woman  had  been  wrapped  by  her 
neighbours  in  burnt  butter  and  oakum. 
"  Now  give  her  a  bath,"  was  Dr.  Grenfell's 
advice  after  he  had  made  his  examination. 
"  You  can  if  you  like,  Doctor,"  the  volunteer 
nurse  said,  "  If  you  do  it  and  she  dies  we 
shan't  be  blamed." 

In  the  hospital  the  Doctor  was  concerned 
with  a  baby  twelve  months  old  whose 
feet  were  twisted  over  till  they  were  almost 
upside  down.  The  mother  had  massaged  the 
feet  with  oil  for  hours  at  a  time.  The  baby 
cried  constantly  with  pain,  and  neither  the 
child  nor  the  mother  had  known  a  satisfactory 
night's   rest    since    it   was    born.     When    the 


AT  ST.  ANTHONY  41 

Doctor  said  the  condition  was  curable,  be- 
cause she  had  brought  her  child  in  time,  the 
look  of  relief  in  the  mother's  face  defied 
recording.  It  is  a  look  often  seen  with  his 
patients,  and  since  he  scarcely  ever  asks  or 
receives  a  fee  worth  mentioning,  it  constitutes 
a  large  part  of  his  reward. 

The  herd  of  reindeer  that  the  Doctor  im- 
ported from  Lapland  and  installed  between 
St.  Anthony  and  Flower's  Cove  with  two  Lapp 
herders  are  now  flourishing  under  Canadian 
auspices  in  (Canadian)  Labrador  in  the 
vicinity  of  the  St.  Augustine  River.  The 
Doctor  himself  took  a  hand  in  the  difficult  job 
of  lassoing  them  and  tying  their  feet,  and 
still  there  were  about  forty  of  the  animals 
that  could  not  be  found.  The  Doctor  says 
it  was  "  lots  of  fun  "  catching  them — but  he 
gives  that  description  to  many  transactions 
that  most  of  us  would  consider  the  hardest 
kind  of  hard  work. 

Next  in  importance  after  the  hospital, 
Exhibit  A  is  the  spick-and-span  orphanage, 
with  thirty-five  of  the  neatest  and  sweetest 
children,  polite  and  friendly  and  more  than 
willing  to  learn.  The  boys  who  are  not  named 
Peter,  James  or  John  are  named  Wilfred. 
**  Suffer  little  children  to  come  unto  me  "  is 


42   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

in  big  letters  on  the  front  of  the  building.  On 
the  hospital  is  the  inscription :  "  Faith,  hope 
and  love  abide,  but  the  greatest  of  these  is 
love."  Over  the  Industrial  School  stands 
written,  "  Whatsoever  ye  do,  do  it  heartily,  as 
unto  the  Lord."  Here  the  beautiful  rugs  are 
made — ^hooked  through  canvas — according  to 
lively  designs  of  Eskimoes  and  seals  and  polar 
bears  prepared  in  the  main  by  the  Doctor. 
Even  the  bird-house  has  its  legend :  "  Praise 
the  Lord,  ye  birds  of  wing."  There  is  a  thriv- 
ing co-operative  store,  next  door  to  the  well- 
kept  little  inn.  A  sign  of  the  Doctor's  devising 
and  painting  swings  in  front  of  the  store.  On 
one  side  is  a  picture  of  huskies  with  a  komatik 
(sled)  bringing  boxes  to  a  settler's  door,  and 
the  inscription  is,  "  Spot  cash  is  always  the 
leader."  On  the  other  side  of  the  sign  a  ship 
named  Spot  Cash  is  seen  bravely  ploughing 
through  mountainous  waves  and  towering- 
bergs.  Underneath  it  reads :  "  There's  no 
sinking  her."  "  That  is  a  reminiscence," 
smiled  the  Doctor,  **  of  my  fights  with  the 
traders.  Do  you  think  these  signs  of  mine 
are  cant?  I  don't  mean  them  that  way.  I 
want  every  one  of  them  to  count." 

A  school,   a  laundry,  a  machine-shop  and 
a  big  store  are  other  features  of  the  plant  at 


AT  ST.  ANTHONY  43 

St.  Anthony.  The  dock  is  a  double-decker, 
and  from  it  a  diminutive  tramway  with  a 
hand-car  sends  "  feeders"  to  the  various 
buildings  and  even  up  the  walk  to  the  Doctor's 
house.  All  the  mail-boats  now  turn  in  at  this 
harbour.  The  captain  of  a  ship  like  the 
Prosper 0 — which  in  the  summer  of  191 9 
brought  on  four  successive  trips  70,  70,  60  and 
50  patients  to  overflow  the  hospital — appreci- 
ates the  facilities  offered  by  this  modem 
wharfage. 

As  the  Doctor  goes  about  St.  Anthony  he 
does  not  fail  to  note  anything  that  is  new, 
or  to  bestow  on  any  worthy  achievement  a 
word  of  praise,  for  which  men  and  women 
work  the  harder. 

To  "  The  Master  of  the  Inn  "  he  expressed 
his  satisfaction  in  the  smooth-running,  cleanly 
hostelry.  "  He  is  one  of  my  boys,"  he  re- 
marked to  me  after  the  conversation.  "  He 
was  trained  here  at  St.  Anthony,  and  then  at 
the  Pratt  Institute  in  Brooklyn." 

Then  he  meets  the  electrician.  "Did  you 
get  your  ammeter?"  he  asks.  And  then: 
"  How  did  you  make  your  rheostat  ? " 

He  points  with  satisfaction  to  a  little  Jersey 
bull  recently  acquired,  and  then  he  critically 
surveys  the  woodland  paths  that  lead  from  his 


44   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

dooryard  to  a  tea-house  on  the  hill  command- 
ing the  wide  vista  of  the  harbour  and  the 
buildings  of  the  industrial  colony.  "  Nothing 
of  this  when  we  came  here,"  he  observes. 
"  The  people  seem  possessed  to  cut  down  all 
their  trees :  we  do  our  best  to  save  ours,  and  we 
dote  on  these  winding  walks,  which  are  an 
innovation,"  Then  he  laughs.  "  A  good 
woman  heard  me  say  that  lambs  were  un- 
known in  Labrador,  and  that  we  had  to  speak 
of  seals  instead  when  we  were  reading  the 
Scriptures.  She  sent  me  a  lamb  and  some 
birds,  stuffed,  so  that  the  people  might  under- 
stand. She  meant  well,  but  in  transit  the 
lamb's  head  got  sadly  twisted  on  one  side,  and 
the  birds  were  decrepit  specimens  indeed  with 
their  bedraggled  plumage." 

The  house  itself  is  delightful,  and  it  is  only 
too  bad  that  the  Doctor  and  his  wife  see  so 
little  of  it. 

It  is  a  house  with  a  distinct  atmosphere. 
The  soul  of  it  is  the  living-room  with  a  wide 
window  at  the  end  that  opens  out  upon  a 
prospect  of  the  wild  wooded  hillside,  with  an 
ivy-vine  growing  across  the  middle,  so  that 
it  seems  as  if  there  were  no  glass  and  one  could 
step  right  out  into  the  clear,  pure  air.  There 
is  a  big,  hearty  fireplace ;  there  is  a  generously 


AT  ST.  ANTHONY  45 

receptive  sofa;  there  is  an  upright  Steinway 
piano,  where  a  blind  piano-tuner  was  working 
at  the  time  of  my  visit. 

Lupins,  the  purple  monk's  hood  and  the 
pink  fireweed  grow  along  the  paths  and  about 
the  house.  A  glass-enclosed  porch  surrounds 
it  on  three  sides,  and  in  the  porch  are  antlered 
heads  of  reindeer  and  caribou,  coloured  views 
of  scenery  in  the  British  Isles  and  elsewhere, 
snowshoes  and  hunting  and  fishing  parapher- 
nalia, a  great  hanging  pot  of  lobelias,  and — 
noteworthily — a  brass  tablet  bearing  this 
inscription : 

To  the  Memory  of 
Three  Noble  Dogs 
Moody 
Watch 
Spy 
whose  lives  were  given  for 
mine  on  the  ice 
April  21,  1908 

Wilfred  Grenfell 
St.  Anthony 

It  is  the  kind  of  house  that  eloquently 
speaks  of  being  lived  in. 

It  is  comfortable,  but  the  note  of  idle  luxury 
or  useless  ostentation  is  absent.  There  is  no 
display  for  its  own  sake.     The  books  bear 


46   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

signs  of  being  fireside  companions.  Dr. 
Grenfell  is  fond  of  running  a  pencil  down  the 
margin  as  he  reads.  He  is  very  fond  of  the 
books  of  his  intimate  friend  Sir  Frederick 
Treves,  in  whose  London  hospital  he  w€ls 
house-surgeon.  "  The  Land  that  is  Desolate  " 
was  aboard  the  Strathcona.  Millais'  book  on 
Newfoundland  was  on  the  writing  desk  at 
St.  Arithony,  and  had  been  much  scored,  as, 
indeed,  had  many  of  his  other  books. 

I  asked  him  to  name  to  me  his  favourite 
books.  Offhand  he  said:  "The  Bible  first, 
naturally.  And  I'm  very  fond  of  George 
Borrow's  *  The  Bible  in  Spain.'  I  admire  Bor- 
row's  persistence  until  he  soki  a  Testament  in 
Finisterre.  *  L'Avengro  '  and  '  Romany  Rye ' 
are  splendid,  too.     I'm  very  fond  of  Kipling's 

*  Kim.'  Then  I  greatly  care  for  the  lives  of 
men  of  action.  Autobiography  is  my  favourite 
form  of  reading.  The  '  Life  of  Chinese  Gor- 
don ' — the    'Life    of    Lord    Lawrence' — -the 

*  Life  of  Havelock.'  You  see  there  is  a  strong 
strain  of  the  Angk)-Indian  in  my  make-up. 
My  family  have  been  much  concerned  with 
colonial  administration  in  India.  The  story 
of  Outram  I  delight  in.  He  was  everything 
that  is  unselfish  and  active — and  a  first-class 
sportsman.     Boswell's  'Johnson'  is  a  great 


AT  ST.  ANTHONY  47 

favourite  of  mine.  I  take  keen  pleasure  in 
Froude's  *  Seamen  of  the  i6th  Century.'  In 
the  lighter  vein  I  read  every  one  of  W.  W. 
Jacob's  stories.  Mark  Twain  is  a  great  man. 
What  hasn't  he  added  to  the  world ! 

"  Then  there  is  '  Anson's  Voyages.'  It's  a 
capital  book.  He  describes  how  he  lugged  off 
two  hundred  and  ten  old  Greenwich  pensioners 
to  sail  his  ships,  though  they  frantically  fled 
in  every  direction  to  avoid  being  impressed 
into  the  service.  All  of  them  died,  and  he 
lost  all  of  his  ships  but  the  one  in  which  he 
fought  and  conquered  a  Spanish  galleon  after 
a  most  desperate  battle. 

"  I  used  to  have  over  my  desk  the  words 
of  Chinese  Gordon: 


*  To  love  myself  last; 
To  do  the  will  of  God,' 


and  the  rest  of  his  creed. 

"  The  only  man  whose  picture  is  in  my  Bible 
is  the  Rev.  Jeremiah  Horrox,  a  farmer's 
son.  He  was  the  first  to  observe  the  transit 
of  Venus.  That  was  in  1640.  The  picture 
shows  him  watching  the  phenomenon  through 
the  telescope.  It  inspired  me  to  think  what  a 
poor  lonely  clergyman  could  accomplish.    He 


48   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

and  men  like  him  stick  to  their  jobs — that's 
what  I  like. 

"  I  have  in  my  Bible  the  words  of  Pershing 
to  the  American  Expeditionary  Force  in 
France  in  1917 — the  passage  beginning 
*  Hardship  will  be  your  lot.'  " 

I  was  privileged  to  look  into  that  Bible.  It 
is  the  Twentieth  Century  New  Testament. 
This  he  likes,  he  says,  because  the  vernacular 
is  clear,  and  sheds  light  on  disputed  passages 
which  are  not  clear  in  other  versions. 

"  I  care  more  for  clearness  than  anything 
else,"  he  declared.  "  When  I  read  to  the 
fishermen  I  want  them  to  understand  every 
word.  But  I  have  often  read  from  this  version 
to  sophisticated  congregations  in  the  United 
States  and  had  persons  afterwards  ask  me 
what  it  was.  Many  passages  are  positively 
incorrect  in  the  King  James  Version.  For 
instance,  the  eighth  chapter  of  Isaiah,  which  is 
the  first  lesson  for  Christmas  morning,  is 
misleading  in  the  Authorized  Version." 

We  debated  the  relative  merits  of  the  King 
James  Version  and  the  Twentieth  Century 
Version  for  a  long  time  one  evening.  I  was 
holding  out  for  the  old  order,  in  the  feeling  that 
the  revised  text  deliberately  sacrificed  much  of 
the  majestic  beauty  and  poetry  of  the  style  of 


AT  ST.  ANTHONY  49 

the  King  James  Version  and  that — despite  an 
occasional  archaism — the  meaning  was  clear 
enough,  and  the  additional  accuracy  did  not 
justify  putting  aside  the  earlier  beloved  trans- 
lation. Dr.  Grenfell  earnestly  insisted  that 
the  most  important  thing  is  to  make  the  mean- 
ing of  the  Scriptures  plain  to  plain  people — 
that  the  sense  is  the  main  consideration,  and 
the  truth  is  more  important  than  a  stately 
cadence  of  poetic  prose. 

"  I  don't  want  the  language  of  three  hun- 
dred years  ago,"  he  asserted.  "  I  want  the 
language  of  today." 

It  is  his  custom  to  crowd  the  margins  of  his 
Bibles  with  annotations.  He  fills  up  one  copy 
after  another — one  of  these  is  in  the  posses- 
sion of  Mrs.  John  Markoe  of  Philadelphia,  who 
prizes  it  greatly. 

By  the  name  of  George  Borrow  and  the 
picture  of  Jeremiah  Horrox  on  the  fly-leaf  of 
the  copy  he  now  uses,  he  has  written  "  My 
inspirers." 

There  is  much  interleaving  and  all  the  in- 
serted pages  are  crowded  with  trenchant 
observations  and  reflections  on  the  meaning 
of  life. 

Adhering  to  the  inner  side  of  the  front 
comer  is  a  poem: 


50   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

"  Is  thy  cruse  of  comfort  failing? 
Rise  and  share  it  with  another. 

Scanty  fare  for  one  will  often 
Make  a  royal  feast  for  twq." 

There  is  a  clipping  from  the  Outlook,  of 
an  article  by  Lyman  Abbott  quoting  Roosevelt 
to  American  troops,  June  5,  19 17,  on  the 
text  from  Micah,  "  What  more  doth  the  Lord 
require  of  thee  than  to  do  justly  and  to  love 
mercy,  and  to  walk  humbly  with  thy  God  ?  " 

Then  there  is  a  quotation  from  Shakespeare : 

**  Heaven  doth  with  us,  as  we  with  torches  do. 
Nor  light  them  for  ourselves.  For  if  our  virtues 
Did  not  go  forth  of  us,  'twere  all  alike 
As  if  we  had  them  not." 

Pages  of  meditation  are  given  to  dreams — 
service — conversion — going  to  the  war  in  191 5 
with  the  Harvard  Medical  Unit — the  place  of 
religion  in  daily  life — the  will — ^the  religion 
of  duty. 

Another  clipping — in  large  print — bears  the 
words :  "  Not  to  love,  not  to  serve,  is  not  to 
live." 

In  the  back  of  the  book  is  pasted  an  ex- 
tended description  of  the  death  of  Edith 
Cavell. 


AT  ST.  ANTHONY  51 

In  one  place  he  writes :  "  I  don't  want  a 
squashy  credulity  weakening  my  resolution 
and  condoning  incompetency — but  just  a  faith 
of  optimism  which  is  that  of  youth  and  makes 
me  do  things  regardless  of  the  consequences." 

His  marginal  annotations  disclose  the  pro- 
found and  the  devoted  student  of  the  Bible — 
the  man  who  without  the  slightest  shred  of 
mealy-mouthed  sanctimoniousness  searches 
the  Scriptures,  and  lives  close  to  the  spirit  of 
the  Master.  Anyone  who  sees  even  a  little 
of  Grenfell  in  action  must  realize  how  faithful 
his  life  is  to  the  pattern  of  Christ's  life  on 
earth.  There  are  many  passages  of  Christ's 
experience — as  when  the  crowd  pressed  in 
upon  Him — or  when  learned  men  were  super- 
cilious— or  when  He  perceived  that  virtue 
had  gone  out  of  Him — or  when  He  was 
reproached  because  He  let  a  man  die  in  His 
absence  —  that  remind  one  of  Grenfell's 
thronged  and  hustled  life.  Many  believe  that 
Grenfell  can  all  but  work  a  miracle  of  healing; 
and  the  lame,  the  halt  and  the  blind  are  brought 
to  him  from  near  and  far,  at  all  times  of  the 
day  or  the  night,  even  as  they  were  brought  to 
the  Master.  In  his  love  of  children,  in  his 
patience  with  the  doer  of  good  and  his 
righteous  wrath  aflame  against  the  evil-doer,  in 


52   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

his  candour  and  his  sunny  sweetness  and  his 
unfailing  courage  Grenfell  translates  the 
precepts  of  the  Book  into  the  action  and  the 
speech  of  the  living  way.  He  cannot  live  by 
empty  professions  of  faith;  he  is  happy  only 
when  he  is  putting  into  vivid  practice  the  creed 
which  guides  his  living. 


IV 

ALL  IN  THE  DAY'S  WORK 

IT  was  hard  to  say  where  the  Doctor's 
day  began  or  ended.  One  night  he  rose 
several  times  to  inspect  wind  and  weather 
ere  deciding  to  make  a  start;  and  at  twenty 
minutes  before  five  he  was  at  the  wheel  him- 
self. Mrs.  Grenfell  clipped  from  "  Life  "  and 
pinned  upon  his  tiny  stateroom  mirror  a 
picture  of  a  caterpillar  showing  to  a  class  of 
wotms  the  early  bird  eating  the  worm.  The 
legend  beneath  it  ran :  "  Now  remember,  dear 
children,  the  lesson  for  today — the  disobedient 
worm  that  would  persist  in  getting  up  too  early 
in  the  morning." 

His  books  and  articles  are  usually  written 
between  the  early  hours  of  five  and  seven 
o'clock  in  the  morning.  The  log  of  the 
Strathcona,  religiously  kept  for  the  informa- 
tion of  the  International  Grenfell  Associa- 
tion, was  likely  to  be  pencilled  on  his  knee 
while  sitting  on  a  pile  of  fire-wood  on  the 
reeling  deck.  Just  as  Roosevelt  wrote  his 
53 


54   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

African  game-hunting  articles  "  on  safari," 
while  so  wearied  with  the  chase  that  he  could 
hardly  keep  his  eyes  open,  the  Doctor  has 
schooled  himself  to  do  his  work  without  con- 
sidering his  pulse-beat  or  his  temperature  or 
his  blood  pressure.  After  a  driving  day  afloat 
and  ashore,  as  surgeon,  magistrate,  minister 
and  skipper,  he  rarely  retires  before  midnight, 
and  often  he  sits  up  till  the  wee  small  hours 
engrossed  in  the  perusal  of  a  book  he  likes. 

When  the  Doctor  enters  a  harbour  unan- 
nounced and  drops  anchor,  within  a  few 
minutes  power-boats  and  rowboats  are  flock- 
ing about  the  Strathcona,  and  the  deck  fills 
with  fishermen,  their  wives  and  their  children, 
all  with  their  major  and  minor  troubles. 
Sometimes  it  requires  the  whole  family  to 
bring  a  patient.  Often  after  a  diagnosis  it 
seems  advisable  to  place  a  patient  in  the  hos- 
pital at  Battle  Harbour  or  St.  Anthony,  and 
so  the  "  Torquay  Cot "  or  another  in  the 
diminutive  hospital  on  the  Strathcona  is  filled, 
or  perhaps  the  passenger  goes  to  hob-nob  with 
the  good-natured  crew  and  consume  their 
victuals.  Many  a  crying  baby,  in  the  limited 
space,  makes  the  narrow  quarters  below-decks 
reverberate  with  the  heraldry  of  the  fact  that 
he  is  teething  or  has  the  turamyache. 


ALL  IN  THE  DAY'S  WORK         55 

The  Doctor  operates  at  the  foot  of  the 
companion-ladder  leading  down  into  the 
saloon,  which  is  dining-room,  living-room  and 
everything  else.  "  I  always  have  a  basin  of 
blood  at  the  foot  of  the  ladder,"  he  grimly 
remarks. 

I  told  him  I  thought  I  would  call  what  I 
wrote  about  him  "  From  Topsails  to  Tonsils," 
since  with  such  versatility  he  passed  from  the 
former  to  the  latter.  "  That  reminds  me,"  he 
said  with  a  laugh,  "  of  the  time  I  went  ashore 
with  Dr.  John  Adams,  and  the  first  thing  we 
did  was  to  lay  three  children  out  on  the  table 
and  remove  their  tonsils.  That  was  a  mighty 
bloody  job,  I  can  tell  you ! " 

The  hatchway  over  his  head  as  he  operates 
is  always  filled  with  the  heads  of  so  many 
spectators — including  frequently  the  Doctor's 
dog,  Fritz — that  the  meagre  light  which 
comes  from  above  is  nearly  shut  off.  Often 
a  lamp  is  necessary,  and  as  electric  flash-lamps 
are  notoriously  faithless  in  a  crisis,  it  is  usually 
a  kerosene  lamp.  Often  an  impatient  patient 
starts  to  come  down  before  his  time,  or  an 
over-eager  parent  or  husband  thinks  he  must 
accompany  the  one  that  he  has  brought  for 
the  doctor's  lancet.  It  is  hard  to  get  elbow- 
room   for  the  necessary  surgery,   and   every 


66   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

operation  is  a  more  or  kss  public  clinical 
demonstration. 

Usually  the  description  of  the  symptoms  is 
of  the  vaguest. 

"  I'm  chilled  to  the  cinders/'  said  an 
anxious  Irishman. 

"Well,  we  can  put  on  some  fresh  coal," 
was  the  Doctor's  answer.  "  How  old  are 
you?" 

"  Forty-six,  Doctor !  " 

"  A  mere  child ! "  the  doctor  replies,  and 
the  merry  twinkle  in  his  eyes  brings  an  an- 
swering smile  to  the  face  of  the  sufferer. 
The  Doctor  himself  was  fifty-five  years  old  in 
February,  1920. 

So  many  fishermen  get  what  are  called 
"  water-whelps  "  or  "  water-pups," — pustules 
on  the  forearm  due  to  the  abrasion  of  the 
skin  by  more  or  less  infected  clothing.  Clean- 
ing the  cod  and  cutting  up  fish  produces  many 
ugly  cuts  and  piercings  and  consequent  sores, 
and  there  is  always  plenty  of  putrefying 
matter  about  a  fishing-stage  to  infect  them. 
So  that  a  very  common  phenomenon  is  a  great 
swelling  on  the  forearm — and  an  agonizing, 
sleep-destroying  one  it  may  be — where  pus 
has  collected  and  is  throbbing  for  the  lance. 
It  is  a  joy  to  witness  the  immediate  relief  that 


ALL  IN  THE  DAY'S  WORK        67 

comes  from  the  cutting-,  and  as  the  iodine  is 
applied  and  deft  fingers  bandage  the  wound 
the  patient  tries  to  find  words  to  tell  of  his 
thankfulness. 

One  afternoon  just  as  the  Doctor  thought 
there  was  a  lull  in  the  proceedings  four 
women  and  a  man  came  over  the  rail  at  once. 
The  first  woman  had  a  "  bad  stummick  " ;  the 
second  wanted  "  turble  bad  "  to  have  her  tooth 
"  hauled  " ;  the  third  had  "  a  sore  neck,  Miss  " 
(thus  addressing  Mrs.  Grenfell) ;  the  fourth 
woman  had  something  "  too  turble  to  tell " ; 
the  man  merely  wanted  to  see  the  Doctor  on 
general  principles. 

Here  is  a  bit  of  dialogue  with  a  woman  who 
couldn't  sleep. 

"  What  do  you  do  when  you  don't  sleep  ? " 

"  I  bide  in  the  bed." 

"Do  you  do  any  work?** 

"  No,  sir." 

"Do  you  cook?" 

"  No.  sir.'* 

"Do  you  wash  the  children?" 

"  Scattered  times,  sir." 

Then  the  husband  put  in :  "  She  couldn't  do 
her  work  and  it  overcast  her.  She  overtopped 
her  mind,  sir." 

He  was  a  fine,  dignified  old  fellow,  and  it 


58   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

was  a  real  pleasure  to  see  how  tender  he  was 
toward  his  poor  fidgety,  neurasthenic  spouse. 
She  hadn't  any  teeth  worth  mentioning,  and 
her  lips  were  pursed  together  with  a  vise-like 
grip.  I  shall  not  forget  how  Doctor  Grenfell 
murmured  to  me  in  a  humorous  aside: 
"  Teeth  certainly  do  add  to  a  lady's  charm ! " 

When  medicine  is  administered,  it  is  hard 
to  persuade  the  afflicted  one  that  the  prescrip- 
tion means  just  what  it  says. 

This  lady  was  told  to  take  three  pills,  and 
she  took  two.  But  most  of  them  exceed  their 
instruction.  To  a  woman  at  Trap  Cove  Dr. 
Fox  gave  liniment  for  her  knee.  It  helped  her. 
Then  she  took  it  internally  for  a  stomach-ache, 
arguing  logically  enough  that  a  pain  is  a  pain, 
a  medicine  is  a  medicine,  and  if  this  liniment 
was  good  for  a  hurt  in  the  knee  it  must  be 
good  for  any  bodily  affliction.  Luckily  she 
lived  to  tell  the  tale. 

"  When  I  was  in  the  North  Sea  the  sailors 
if  they  got  the  chance  ransacked  my  medicine 
cupboard  and  drank  up  everything  they  could 
lay  their  hands  on."  Such  autobiographic 
confessions  are  often  made  while  the  Doctor 
mixes  a  draught  or  concocts  a  lotion.  "  Here 
it  is  the  same  way.  I  have  had  my  customers 
drain  off  the  whole  bottle  of  medicine  at  once, 


ALL  IN  THE  DAY'S  WORK         59 

on  the  theory  that  if  one  teaspoon ful  did  you 
good,  a  bottle  would  be  that  much  better." 

His  questions,  like  his  lancet,  go  right  to 
the  root  of  the  trouble.  Nothing  phases  him. 
He  answers  every  question.  He  never  tells 
people  they  are  fools;  his  inexhaustible  fore- 
bearance  with  the  inept  and  the  obtuse  is  not 
the  least  Christlike  of  his  attributes. 

It  is  difficult  for  these  men  to  come  to  the 
hospital  in  summer,  for  their  livelihood  de- 
pends on  their  catch,  and  then  on  their  salting 
and  spreading  the  fish:  and  after  the  cod- 
fishery  has  fallen  away  to  zero  the  herring 
come  in  October,  and  the  cod  to  some  extent 
return  with  them. 

"  When  I  tell  them  they  must  go  to  the 
hospital,  they  always  say  *  I  haven't  time :  I 
want  to  stay  and  mind  my  traps.' " 

The  Doctor  hates  above  all  things — as  I 
have  indicated — to  leave  a  wound  open,  or 
a  malady  half-treated,  and  hustle  on.  It  is 
the  great  drawback  and  exasperation  in  his 
work  that  the  interval  before  he  sees  the 
patient  again  must  be  so  long.  He  mourns 
whenever  he  has  to  pull  a  tooth  that  might  be 
saved  if  he  could  wait  to  fill  it. 

He  is  always  working  against  time,  against 
the  sea,  against  ignorance,  against  a  want  of 


60   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

charity  on  the  part  of  nominal  Christians  who 
ought  to  help  him  instead  of  carping  and 
denouncing. 

But  he  is  working  with  all  honest  and 
sincere  men,  all  who  are  true  to  the  high 
priesthood  of  science,  all  who  are  on  the  side 
of  the  angels. 

One  man  thus  describes  his  affliction,  letting 
the  Doctor  draw  his  own  deductions : 

"  Like  a  httle  round  ball  the  pain  will  start, 
sir;  then  it  will  full  me  inside;  and  the  only 
rest  I  get  is  to  crumple  meself  down." 

An  unhappy  woman  reciting  the  history  of 
her  complaint  declared :  "  The  last  doctor 
said  I  had  an  impression  of  the  stomach  and 
was  full  of  glams." 

"  Bless  God !  "  exclaimed  another,  speaking 
of  her  children.  "  There's  nothing  the  matter 
with  'em.  They  he's  ofif  carrying  wood.  They 
just  ODughs  and  heaves,  that's  all." 

One  mother,  asked  what  treatment  she  was 
administering  to  her  infant  replied:  Oh,  I 
give  'er  nothing  now.  Just  plenty  of  cold 
water  and  salts  and  spruce  beer;  ne'er  drop 
o'  grease." 

When  there  is  no  doctor  to  be  had  the 
services  of  the  seventh  son  of  a  seventh  son 
are  in  demand. 


-*i»'^' 


BATTLE  HARBOUR— SPREADING  FISH   FOR  DRYIXG. 


ALL  IN  THE  DAY'S  WORK         61 

Elemental  human  misery  made  itself  heard 
in  the  dolorous  accents  of  a  corpulent  lady  of 
fifty.  "  I  works  in  punishment  on  account  of 
my  eyes.  Sometimes  I  piles  two  or  three  fish 
on  top  of  each  other  and  I  has  to  do  it  over. 
I  cries  a  good  deal  about  it."  Her  gratifica- 
tion as  she  was  fitted  to  a  pair  of  "  plus  " 
glasses  that  greatly  improved  her  sight  was 
worth  a  long  journey  to  witness.  Many  pairs 
of  glasses  were  put  on  her  nose  en  route  to  the 
discovery  of  the  most  satisfactory  pair,  and 
each  time  she  would  say  "  Lovely !  Beauti- 
ful!" with  crescendo  of  fervour. 

I  heard  a  fond  father  tell  the  Doctor  that 
there  was  a  "rale  squick  (real  squeak)  bawl- 
ing on  the  inside  of  "  his  offspring. 

A  man  who  climbed  down  the  companion 
way  with  an  aching  side,  a  rupture,  and  a 
hypertrophic  growth  on  his  finger,  was  asked 
what  he  did  for  his  ribs. 

"  I  rinsed  them,"  was  the  response. 

The  Doctor  is  always  on  the  lookout  for 
the  "  first  flag  of  warning  " — as  he  calls  it — 
of  the  dreaded  "  T.  B."  which  is  responsible 
for  one  death  in  every  four  in  Newfoundland. 
Much  of  his  talk  with  a  patient  has  to  do  with 
fresh  air  and  fresh  vegetables.  The  Eskimoes 
may  know  better  than  some  native  Newfound- 


62   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

landers.  "  I  like  air.  I  push  my  whiphandle 
through  the  roof,"  said  one  of  the  Eskimoes. 

Here  is  a  typical  excerpt,  from  a  conversa- 
tion with  a  young  man  who  to  the  layman 
looked  very  robust. 

"How  old  are  you?" 

"  Twenty-two,  sir." 

"  Have  any  in  your  family  had  tubercu- 
losis?" 

"  Father's  brother  Will  and  Aunt  Clarissa 
died  of  it,  sir." 

"Are  you  suffering?" 

"  It  shoots  up  all  through  my  stomach,  sir." 

"  Do  you  read  and  write  ?  " 

"  No,  Doctor." 

"See  clearly?" 

"Yes,  Doctor." 

"  Are  you  able  to  get  any  greens  ?  " 

"  Sometimes,  sir." 

"Dock-leaves?" 

"  No,  sir." 

"  What  greens  have  you  ?  " 

"  Alexander  greens,  sir." 

"  Any  berries  ?  " 

"  Yes,  Doctor.     And  bake  apples." 

"  That's  good.  You  must  eat  plenty  of 
them.  You  must  have  good  food.  As  good 
as  you  can  afford.     I'm  sorry  it's  so  hard 


ALL  IN  THE  DAY'S  WORK         63 

where  you  live  to  get  anything  fresh.  Do  you 
sleep  well  ?  " 

"  Yes,  Doctor." 

"Anybody  else  sleep  in  the  same  bed?" 

"  No,  Doctor." 

"  When  you  go  to  bed  do  you  keep  the 
windows  open?  " 

"  Yes,  Doctor." 

"  That's  right.  That's  very  important.  Do 
people  spit  around  you?"  (The  Doctor  is 
always  on  the  war-path  against  this  disgusting 
and  dangerous  habit.) 

"  No,  sir."     - 

"Quite  sure?" 

"  Well,  we  use  spit-boxes." 

"  Do  you  burn  the  contents  ?  " 

"  Yes,  sir." 

"  Do  you  wear  warm  things  ?  " 

"Yes,  Doctor." 

"Sweat  a  lot?" 

"  Yes,  Doctor." 

"You  mustn't  get  wet  without  changing 
your  clothes.  Now,  when  you  eat  potatoes  I 
want  you  to  eat  them  baked,  with  the  skins 
on.  I  don't  mean  eat  the  skins.  But  the  part 
right  under  the  skins  is  very  important." 

"  Yes,  Doctor." 

As  one  listens   to  such  catechizing  it  be- 


64   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

comes  clear  that  the  Doctor  lays  great  stress 
on  fresh  air  and  fresh  food  as  medicines, 
"  Cold  is  your  friend  and  heat  is  your  enemy  " 
is  his  oft-reiterated  dictum  to  consumptives. 

Once  he  said  to  me,  **  I  attach  great  im- 
portance to  the  sun-bath.  I  believe  in  expos- 
ing the  naked  body  to  all  it  can  get  of  the  air." 
In  the  nipping  cold  of  the  early  morning  on 
the  Strathcona  I  emerged  from  beneath  four 
double  blankets  to  hear  the  Doctor  joyfully 
cry :  "  I've  just  had  my  bucket  on  deck.  You 
could  have  had  one  too,  but  I  lost  the  bucket 
overboard."  It  has  been  a  pastime  of  his  to 
row  with  a  boatload  of  doctors  and  nurses  to 
an  iceberg  and  go  in  swimming  from  the  plat- 
form at  the  base  of  the  berg. 

Sometimes  the  Macedonian  cry  comes  by 
letter. 

Here  is  a  pencilled  missive  from  an  old 
woman  who  evidently  got  a  kindly  neighbour 
to  write  it  for  her,  for  the  signature  is  mis- 
spelled : 

"  Pleas  ducker  grandlield  would  you  help 
me  with  a  little  clothing  I  am  a  wodow  85  yars 
of  age." 

"  Grandlield  "  is  not  further  from  the  name 
than  a  great  many  have  come.  Here  are  some 
other  common  variants: 


ALL  IN  THE  DAY'S  WORK         65 

Gumpin 

Grinpiel 

Greenfield 

Cram  full 

Gremple 

Gransfield 

From  a  village  In  White  Bay,  where  the 
fishing  was  woefully  poor  in  1919,  comes  this 
pathetic  plea: 

"To  Dr.  and  Mrs.  Grenfell:  Dear  Friends: 
I  am  writing  to  see  if  you  will  help  me  a  little. 
— My  husband  got  about  i  qtl  of  fish  ( i  quin- 
tal— pronounced  kental — of  112  pounds, 
worth  at  most  $1 1.20)  this  summer,  and  I  have 
four  children,  15,  13,  11,  6  years,  and  his 
Father,  and  we  are  all  naked  as  birds  with  no 
ways  or  means  to  get  anything.  What  can  I 
do;  if  you  can  do  anything  for  me  I  hope 
God  will  bless  you.  It  is  pretty  hard  to  look 
at  a  house  full  of  naked  children." 

Mrs.  Grenfell  visited  White  Bay  in  July  and 
in  two  villages  found  a  number  of  people  all 
but  utterly  destitute.  They  were  living  on 
"loaf"  (bread)  and  tea.  They  had  icefields 
instead  of  fish.  Six  of  the  breadwinners  got 
a  job  at  St.  Anthony.  The  villagers  had  few 
pairs  of  shoes  among  them.     In  several  in- 


66   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

stances  the  foot-gear  was  fashioned  of  the 
sides  of  rubber  bocts  tied  over  the  feet  with 
pieces  of  string.  The  people  of  this  neighbour- 
hood are  folk  of  the  highest  character,  and 
richly  deserving,  though  poverty-stricken. 

Another  characteristic  letter : 

*'  Dr.  dear  sir.  please  send  two  roals  fielt 
(rolls  of  felt)  one  Roal  Ruber  Hide  (rub- 
beroid)  one  ten  Patent  for  Paenting  Moter 
Boat  some  glass  for  the  beam  (barn)  thanks 
veary  mutch  for  the  food  you  sent  me.  Glad 
two  have  James  Home  and  his  Leg  so  well 
you  made  a  splended  Cut  of  it  this  time  I 
will  all  way  Pray  for  you  while  I  Live  Pota- 
toes growing  well  on  the  Farm  Large  Enough 
two  Eaght  all  redey.  But  I  loast  my  Cabbages 
Plants  wit  the  Big  falls  rain  and  snow  i  the 
first  of  the  summer,  but  I  have  lotes  of  turnips 
Plants  I  have  all  the  Caplen  (a  small  fish) 
I  wants  two  Put  on  the  farm  this  summer. 

"  dr — dear  sir  I  want  some  nails  to  finesh 
the  farm  fance  I  farn." 

In  a  fisherman's  house  in  an  interval  be- 
tween examinations  of  children  for  tonsils  and 
adenoids  the  Doctor  related  this  incident  to  a 
spellbound  group.  He  never  has  any  trouble 
holding  an  audience  with  stories  that  grow  out 
of  his  work,  and  the  fishermen  delight  as  he 


ALL  IN  THE  DAY'S  WORK         67 

does  in  his  informal  chats  with  them  and  witH 
their  families. 

"  We  had  a  long  hunt  for  a  starving  family 
of  which  we  had  been  told  by  the  Hudson  Bay 
Company  agent,  on  an  island  at  Hamilton 
Inlet  in  Labrador.  The  father  was  half 
Eskimo.  He  had  a  single-barrelled  shotgun 
with  which  he  had  brought  down  one  gull. 
With  his  wife  and  his  five  naked  children  he 
was  living  under  a  sail.  The  children,  though 
they  had  nothing  on,  were  blue  in  the  face 
with  eating  the  blueberries,  and  they  were  fat 
as  butter.  The  mate  took  two  of  the  little  ones, 
as  if  they  were  codfish,  one  under  each  arm, 
and  carried  them  aboard.  There  were  tears 
in  his  eyes,  for  he  had  seven  little  ones  of  his 
own,  and  he  was  very  fond  of  children.  Both 
were  carefully  brought  up  at  our  Childrens* 
Home  and  one  of  them,  who  can  now  both 
read  and  write,  is  aboard  at  present  as  a  mem- 
ber of  the  crew  of  the  Strathcona." 

After  evening  prayers  on  Sunday,  at  which 
the  Doctor  has  spoken,  he  has  treated  as  many 
as  forty  persons. 

In  one  place  after  removing  a  man's  tonsils 
it  was  a  case  of  eyeglasses  to  be  fitted,  then 
came  one  who  clamoured  to  have  three  teeth 
extracted.    The  teeth  were  "  hauled  "  and  a 


68   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

bad  condition  of  ankylosis  at  the  roots  was 
revealed.  Then  a  girl  had  a  throat  abscess 
lanced,  and  she  was  followed  by  a  boy  with 
a  dubious  rash  and  a  tubercular  inheritance. 
The  Doctor  is  ever  on  the  lookout  for  the 
"  New  World  "  smallpox :  but  the  stethoscope 
detected  a  pleuritic  attack,  and  strong  support- 
ing bandages  were  wound  about  the  lower  part 
of  his  chest. 

Another  group  was  this: 

1.  An  operation  on  a  child's  tonsils.  A 
local  anaesthetic  was  given — lo  per  cent,  co- 
caine. A  tooth  was  also  removed.  The  total 
charge  was  $i.oo. 

2.  A  fisherman  came  for  ointments — zinc 
oxide  and  carbolic. 

3.  An  eight  months  old  infant  was  brought 
in,  blind  in  the  right  eye.  This  condition 
might  have  been  obviated  had  boric  acid  been 
applied  at  the  time  of  the  baby's  birth.  The 
mother  said  that  only  a  little  warm  water  had 
been  u^ed. 

So  many,  though  they  may  not  say  so,  ap- 
pear to  believe  with  Mary  when  she  said  to 
Jesus,  "  Lord,  if  thou  hadst  been  here  my 
brother  had  not  died."  They  think  the  Doc- 
tor has  something  like  supernatural  powers. 

With  the  utmost  care  he  prepared  to  ad- 


ALL  IN  THE  DAY'S  WORK         69 

minister  novocaine  and  treat  the  wound  of  a 
man  who  had  run  a  splinter  into  his  left  hand 
between  the  first  and  second  fingers,  leaving 
an  unhealed  sinus.  "  Wonderful  stuff,  this 
novocaine ! "  he  remarked,  as  he  put  on  a  pair 
of  rubber  gloves,  washed  them  in  alcohol,  and 
then  gave  his  knives  a  bath  in  a  soup-plate 
of  alcohol. 

"  In  the  inflamed  parts  none  of  these  local 
anaesthetics  work  very  well,"  was  his  next 
coonment. 

But  the  patient  scarcely  felt  it  when  he  ran 
a  probe  through  the  hand  till  it  all  but  pro- 
truded through  the  skin  on  the  inner  side. 

The  bad  blood  was  spooned  out,  and  then 
the  deep  cavity  swallowed  about  six  inches  of 
iodoform  gauze.  When  the  wound  had  been 
carefully  packed  the  hand  was  bandaged.  For 
nearly  an  hour's  work  requiring  the  exercise  of 
rare  skill  and  the  utmost  caution  the  charge 
was — a  dollar.  And  that  included  a  pair  of 
canvas  gloves  and  another  pair  of  rubber  mitts, 
of  the  Doctor's  own  devising,  drawn  over  the 
bandages  and  tied  so  that  the  man  might  con- 
tinue at  his  work  without  getting  salt  water 
or  any  contaminating  substance  in  the  wound 
and  so  infecting  it  badly. 

These   two   importunate  telegrams   arrived 


70   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

while  he  was  paying  a  flying  visit  to  head- 
quarters at  St.  Anthony : 

"Do  your  best  to  come  and  operate  me  I 
have  an  abscess  under  right  tonsil  will  give  you 
coal  for  your  steamer  am  getting  pretty  weak. 
Capt.  J.  N.  Cote,  Long  Point." 

A  second  telegram  arriving  almost  simul- 
taneously from  the  same  man  read :  "  Please 
come  as  fast  as  you  can  to  operate  me  in  the 
throat  and  save  my  life." 

Captain  Cote  is  the  keeper  of  the  Greenly 
Island  Lighthouse,  near  Blanc  Sablon.  It  is 
a  very  important  station. 

The  Doctor,  true  to  form,  at  once  made  up 
his  mind  to  go.  Greenly  Island  is  about  lOO 
miles  from  St.  Anthony,  and  on  the  opposite 
side  of  the  Straits,  on  the  Canadian  side  of 
the  line  that  divides  Canadian  Labrador  from 
Newfoundland  Labrador.  The  short  cut  took 
us  through  Carpoon  (Quirpon)  Tickle,  and 
there  we  spent  the  night,  for  much  as  the  Doc- 
tor wanted  to  push  ahead  the  wind  made  the 
Strait  so  rough  that — having  it  against  us — 
the  Strathcona  could  not  have  made  headway. 
"  I  remember,"  said  the  Doctor  with  a  smile, 
"  that  once  we  steamed  all  night  in  Bonavista 


ALL  IN  THE  DAY'S  WORK         71 

Bay,  full  speed  ahead,  and  in  the  morning 
found  ourselves  exactl)'  where  we  were  the 
night  before.  Coal  is  too  scarce  now."  On 
one  occasion  the  Strathcona  distinguished  her- 
self by  going  ashore  with  all  sails  set. 

By  the  earliest  light  of  morning  we  were 
under  way.  The  tendency  of  a  land-lubber  at 
the  wheel  off  this  cruel  coast  was  naturally  to 
give  the  jagged  and  fearsome  spines  of  rock 
as  wide  a  berth  as  possible.  In  the  blue  dis- 
tance might  be  seen  a  number  of  bergs,  large 
and  small,  just  as  a  reminder  of  what  the  ice 
can  do  to  navigation  when  it  chooses;  and  in 
the  foreground  were  fishermen's  skiffs  bobbing 
about  and  taking  their  chances  of  crossing  the 
track  of  our  doughty  little  steamer.  But  the 
Doctor  called  in  at  the  door  of  the  wheel- 
house  :  "  Run  her  so  close  to  those  rocks  that 
you  almost  skin  her !  "  He  was  thinking  not 
of  his  ship,  not  of  himself,  but  of  the  necessity 
of  getting  to  the  lonely  lighthouse-keeper  at 
the  earliest  possible  moment,  to  perform  that 
operation  for  a  subtonsillar  abscess.  There 
was  a  picture  In  his  mind  of  the  valiant  French 
Canadian  engineer  gasping  for  breath  as  the 
orifice  dwindled,  and  now  he  was  burning  not 
the  firewood  but  coal — a  semi-precious  stone 
in  these  waters  in  this  year  of  grace.     The 


72   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

Strathcona  labours  and  staggers ;  Fritz  the  dog 
goes  to  the  bowsprit  and  sniffs  the  sun  by  day 
and  the  moon  by  night;  the  ship  is  carrying 
all  the  bellying  sails  she  has;  and  the  Doctor 
mounts  to  the  crow's-nest  to  make  sure  that 
his  beloved  new  topsail  is  doing  its  full  share. 
He  tools  the  Strathcona — when  he  is  at  the 
wheel — as  if  she  were  a  taxicab.  So  the  long 
diagonal  across  the  Strait  is  cut  down,  seeth- 
ing mile  by  mile,  till  between  Flower's  Cove 
and  Forteau — where  the  Strait  is  at  the 
narrowest,  and  the  shores  are  nine  miles  and 
three-quarters  apart — it  almost  seems  as  if  an 
hour's  swim  on  either  hand  would  take  one 
to  the  eternal  crags  where  the  iris  blows  and 
the  buttercup  spreads  her  cloth  of  gold. 

We  drew  near  Blanc  Sablon  (pronounced 
Sablow)  with  Grant's  Wharf  by  the  river. 
West  of  that  river  for  several  hundred  yards 
it  is  no  man's  land  between  the  two  Labradors 
— that  is  to  say,  between  Canada  and  New- 
foundland. A  man  stood  up  in  a  jouncing 
power-boat  and  wa'Ved  an  oar,  and  then — his 
overcoat  buttoned  up  to  his  ears — our  patient, 
Captain  Cote,  stood  up  beside  him.  They  had 
come  out  to  meet  us  to  save  every  moment  of 
precious  time.  It  was  a  weak  and  pale  and 
shaky  man  that  came  aboard — but  he  was  a 


'ALL  IN  THE  DAY'S  WORK        73 

man  every  bit  of  him,  and  he  did  not  wince 
when  the  Doctor,  in  the  crypt-like  gloom  of 
the  Strathcona's  saloon,  while  the  tin  lamp  was 
held  in  front  of  the  Captain's  mouth,  reached 
into  the  throat  with  his  attenuated  tongs  and 
scissors  and  made  the  necessary  incision  after 
giving  him  several  doses  of  the  novocains  so- 
lution as  a  local  anaesthetic. 

"  Then  the  Captain  sat  back  white  and  gasp- 
ing on  the  settle,  and — with  a  strong  Canadian 
French  flavour  in  his  speech — told  us  a  little 
of  his  lonely  vigil  of  the  summer. 

**  In  eighteen  days.  Doctor,  I  never  saw  a 
ship  for  the  fog:  but  I  kept  the  light  burn- 
ing— two  thousand  gallons  of  kerosene  she 
took. 

"All  summer  long  it  was  fog — fog — fog. 
I  show  you  by  the  book  I  keep.  Ever  since 
the  ice  went  out  we  have  the  fog.  Five  days 
we  have  in  July  when  it  was  clear — but  never 
such  a  clear  day  as  we  have  now.  Come 
ashore  with  me  on  Greenly  Island  and  you 
shall  have  the  only  motor  car  ride  it  would  be 
possible  for  you  to  have  in  Labrador." 

We  accepted  the  invitation.  At  the  head  of 
the  wharf  were  men  spreading  the  fish  to 
dry — grey-white  acres  of  them  on  the  flakes 
like  a  field  of  everlastings.     In  the  lee  of  a 


74   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

hill  they  had  a  few  potato-plants,  fenced  away 
from  the  dogs.  In  a  dwelling  house  with 
"  Please  wipe  your  feet "  chalked  on  the  door 
we  found  a  spotless  kitchen  and  two  fresh- 
cheeked,  white-aproned  women  cooking.  It 
was  a  fine  thing  to  know  that  they  were  up- 
holding so  high  a  standard  of  cleanliness  and 
sanitation  in  that  lonely  outpost — as  faithful 
as  the  keeper  of  the  light  in  his  storm-defying- 
tower. 

From  the  fish  flakes  of  the  ancient  "  room  " 
over  half  a  mile  of  cinderpath  and  planking 
we  rode  on  the  chassis  of  a  Ford  car,  which 
the  keeper  uses  to  convey  supplies. 

"  The  first  joy-ride  I  ever  had  in  Labrador," 
said  the  Doctor,  and  the  Captain  grinned  and 
let  out  another  link  to  the  roaring  wind  that 
flattened  the  grass  and  threatened  to  lift  his 
cabbage-plants  out  of  their  paddock  under  his 
white  housewalls. 

Safe  in  his  living-room,  with  wife  and  chil- 
dren, two  violins,  a  talking-machine,  an 
ancient  Underwood  typewriter  and  even  a 
telephone  that  connected  him  with  the  wharf, 
Captain  Cote  pulled  out  his  wallet,  selected 
three  ten-dollar  bills  and  offered  them  to  the 
Doctor,  saying :  "  I  will  pay  you  as  much  more 
as  you  like." 


ALL  IN  THE  DAY'S  WORK         75 

Dr.  Grenfell  took  one  of  the  bills,  saying, 
"  That  will  be  enough." 

The  Captain,  mindful  of  his  promise  about 
the  coal,  said,  "  How  much  coal  do  you 
want  ? " 

"  On  the  understanding  that  the  Canadian 
Government  supplies  it,"  answered  the  Doc- 
tor, "  I  will  let  you  put  aboard  the  Strathcona 
just  the  amount  we  used  in  coming  here — 55^ 
tons." 

The  Captain  went  to  the  telephone  and 
talked  with  a  man  at  the  wharf.  Then  he 
turned  away  from  the  transmitter  and  said : 
"  He  tells  me  that  he  can't  put  the  coal  on 
board  today,  because  it  would  blow  away  while 
they  were  taking  it  out  to  the  Strathcona  on 
the  skiff.    We  have  no  sacks  to  put  it  in." 

"  Very  well,"  returned  the  Doctor,  "  when 
it's  convenient  you  might  store  it  at  Forteau. 
They  will  need  it  there  this  winter  at  Sister 
Bailey's  "  nursing  station."  Then  he  dis- 
missed the  subject  of  the  fee  and  the  fuel- 
supply  to  tell  us  how  pleased  he  was  to  find 
that  Mackenzie  King,  author  of  "  Industry  and 
Humanity,"  had  become  the  Liberal  leader  in 
Canada.  King  is  a  Harvard  Doctor  of 
Philosophy,  a  man  of  thought  and  action  of 
the  type  by  nature  and  training  in  sympathy 


76   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

with  Gren  fell's  work.  It  is  a  great  thing  for 
Canada  that  a  man  of  his  calibre  and  scholarly 
distinction  has  been  raised  to  the  place  he 
holds. 

From  the  site  of  the  lighthouse  there  are 
observed  most  singular  wide  shelves  of  smooth 
brown  rock  presenting  their  edges  to  the  fury 
of  the  surf,  and  over  the  broad  brown  ex- 
panse are  scattered  huge  boulders  that  look 
as  though  the  Druids  who  left  the  memorials 
at  Stonehenge  might  have  put  thera  there. 
Captain  Cote  said  the  winter  ice-pack  tossed 
these  great  stones  about  as  if  it  were  a  child's 
game  with  marbles. 

A  happy  man  he  thought  himself  to  have  his 
children  with  him.  The  lighthouse-keeper  at 
Belle  Isle  lost  six  of  his  family  on  their  way 
to  join  him;  another  at  Flower's  Cove  lost 
five.  As  a  remorseless  graveyard  of  the  deep 
the  region  is  a  rival  of  the  dreaded  Sable 
Island  off  Newfoundland's  south  shore. 

A  wire  rope  indicates  the  pathway  of  two 
hundred  yards  between  the  light  and  the  fog- 
horn: and  in  winter  the  way  could  not  be 
found  without  it.  The  foghorn  gave  a  solo 
performance  for  our  benefit,  at  the  instiga- 
tion of  either  member  of  a  pair  of  Fairbanks- 
Morse     15     horse-power     gasoline     engines. 


ALL  IN  THE  DAY'S  WORK        77 

We  were  ten  feet  from  it,  but  It  can  be  heard 
ten  miles  and  more. 

A  **  keeper  of  the  light "  like  Captain  Cote, 
or  Peter  Bourque,  who  tended  the  Bird  Rock 
beacon  for  twenty-eight  years,  is  a  man  after 
Grenfell's  own  heart.  For  Grenfell  himself 
lets  his  light  shine  before  men,  and  knows  the 
nee<d  of  keeping  the  flame  lambent  and  bright, 
through  thick  and  thin. 


V 

THE  CAPTAIN  OF  INDUSTRY 

DR.  GRENFELL  in  his  battles  with 
profiteering  traders  has  incurred  their 
enmity,  of  course — but  he  has  been 
the  people's  friend.  The  favourite  charge 
of  those  who  fight  him  is  that  he  is  amassing 
wealth  for  himself  by  barter  on  the  side,  and 
collecting  big  sums  in  other  lands  from  which 
he  diverts  a  golden  stream  for  his  own  uses. 
The  infamous  accusation  is  too  pitifully  lame 
and  silly  to  be  worth  denying.  The  most  un- 
selfish of  men,  he  has  sometimes  worked  his 
heart  out  for  an  ingrate  who  bit  the  hand  that 
fed  him.  His  enterprise,  whose  reach  always 
exceeds  his  grasp,  is  money-losing  rather  than 
money-making. 

The  International  Grenfell  Association  has 
never  participated  in  the  trading  business.  Dr. 
Grenfell,  however,  started  several  stores  with 
his  own  money  and  took  it  out  after  a  time 
with  no  interest.  He  delights  in  the  success 
of  those  whose  aim  is  no  more  than  a  just 
78 


THE   CAPTAIN  OF  INDUSTRY     79 

profit,  who  buy  from  the  fisherman  at  a  fair 
price  and  sell  to  him  in  equity.  There  is  a 
co-operative  store  of  his  original  inspiration 
and  engineering  at  Flower's  Cove,  and  another 
is  the  one  at  Cape  Charles,  which  in  five  years 
returned  lOO  per  cent,  on  the  investment  with 
5  per  cent,  interest. 

Accusations  of  graft  he  is  accustomed  to 
face,  and  a  commission  appointed  by  the  New- 
foundland Legislature  investigated  him, 
travelled  with  him  on  the  Strathcona,  and  com- 
pletely exonerated  him.  Some  persons  had 
even  gone  so  far  as  to  accuse  him  of  making 
money  out  of  the  old  clothes  business  aboard 
what  they  were  pleased  to  term  his  "  yacht." 
They  descended  to  such  petty  false  witness  as 
to  swear  that  he  had  taken  a  woman's  dress 
with  $12  in  it.  It  is  wearisome  to  have  to 
dignify  such  charges  by  noticing  them.  They 
are  about  on  a  par  with  the  letter  of  a  bishop 
who  wrote  to  him :  "  I  should  like  to  know 
how  you  can  reconcile  with  your  conscience 
reading  a  prayer  in  the  morning  against 
heresy  and  schism,  and  then  preaching  at  a 
dissenting  meeting-house  in  the  afternoon." 

A  vestryman  objected  to  his  preaching  in 
the  church  at  a  diminutive  and  forlorn  settle- 
ment because  "  he  talks  about  trade." 


80   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

The  Doctor  is  never  embittered  by  his  tra- 
ducers.  He  knows  the  meaning  of  J.  L. 
Garvin's  saying,  "  He  who  is  bitter  is  beaten." 
Nothing  beclouds  for  long  his  sunny  tem- 
permanent,  but  his  unfailing  good-humour 
never  dulls  the  fighting  edge  of  his  courage. 

"  I  bought  a  boat  for  a  worthy  soul,  to  set 
him  on  his  feet,"  the  Doctor  told  me.  "  She 
had  been  driven  ashore  in  North  Labrador.  I 
had  to  buy  everything  separately — and  the 
total  came  to  $500.  The  boat  was  to  work 
out  the  payment.  This  she  did — Alas!  later 
on  she  went  ashore  on  Brehat  ('Braw') 
Shoals.  Only  her  lifeboat  came  ashore,  with 
the  name  — Pendragon — -upon  it." 

The  Doctor  put  $1,000  of  his  money  into 
the  co-operative  store  at  Flower's  Cove,  and 
when  the  enterprise  was  fairly  launched  and 
the  Grenfell  Association  decided  to  abstain 
from  lending  help  to  trade  he  drew  it  out,  and 
asked  no  interest.  That  store  in  its  last  fiscal 
year  sold  goods  to  the  value  of  more  than 
$200,000,  paying  fair  prices  and  selling  at  a 
fair  profit.  It  had  three  ships  in  the  summer 
of  1919  carrying  fish  abroad — **  foreigners." 
The  proprietor  bought  for  $50  a  schooner  that 
went  ashore  at  Forteau,  dressed  it  in  a  new 
suit  of  sails  worth  $1,250,  and  now  has  a 


THE  CAPTAIN  OF  INDUSTRY     81 

craft  worth  $8,000  to  hira.  Dr.  Grenfell  has 
personally  great  affection  for  some  of  the 
traders — it  is  the  "  truck  system  "  he  hates. 
"Trading  in  the  old  days,"  the  Doctor  ob- 
serves, "  was  like  a  pond  at  the  top  of  a  hill. 
It  got  drained  right  out.  The  money  was  not 
set  in  circulation  here  on  the  soil  of  New- 
foundland. The  traders  in  two  months  took 
away  the  money  that  should  have  been  on  the 
coast.  19 19  was  the  first  year  in  which  the 
co-operative  stores  themselves  sent  fish  to  the 
other  side.  A  vessel  from  Iceland  came  here 
to  the  Flower's  Cove  store;  another  was  a 
Norwegian;  a  third  came  from  Cadiz  with 
salt;  and  today  a  small  vessel  is  preparing  to 
go  across." 

At  Red  Bay  is  another  store  to  which 
Dr.  Grenfell  loaned  money,  which  he  drew 
out,  sans  interest,  when  it  was  prosperous.  It 
has  saved  the  people  there,  as  every  soul  in 
the  harbour  will  testify. 

The  fishermen  on  the  West  Coast  in  19 19 
enjoyed  something  like  affluence  as  compared 
with  their  brethren  on  the  East  Coast,  where 
the  fish  were  scarce. 

Where  there  were  lobsters,  they  were 
getting  $35.50  or  $35.00  per  case  of  48  one- 
pound  cans.    For  cod,  $11.20  a  quintal  of  112 


82   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

pounds  was  paid.  In  1918  over  $15  per  quin- 
tal was  paid. 

On  the  other  hand,  with  pork  at  $100  a 
barrel,  coal  at  $24  a  ton,  and  gasoline  at  70 
cents  a  gallon,  the  big  prices  for  fish  were 
matched  by  an  alarming  cost  of  the  necessaries 
of  life. 

Some  fishermen  make  but  $200  a  year;  a 
few  make  as  much  as  $2,ocmd  and  even  more. 
The  merchant  princes  as  a  rule  are  the  store- 
keepers who  deal  with  the  fishermen.  There 
were  two  big  bank  failures  in  St.  John's  years 
ago,  and  since  that  time  many  persons  have 
hidden  their  money  in  the  ground.  One 
fisherman  of  whose  case  I  heard  had  but  $35 
in.  cash  as  the  result  of  his  season's  effort,  and 
he  had  eight  to  support  besides  himself.  The 
small  amount  of  ready  money  on  which  people 
can  live  with  a  house,  a  vegetable  garden,  and 
a  supply  of  firewood  at  their  backs  in  the 
timbered  hillsides  is  unbelievable.  If  a  man 
was  fortunate  enough  to  possess  any  grass- 
land, he  might  get  as  much  as  $65  a  ton  for 
his  hay  in  1919,  if  he  could  spare  it  from  his 
own  cows  and  sheep.  It  is  too  bad  that  for 
the  sake  of  the  sheep  the  noble  Newfoundland 
dog  that  chased  them  has  had  to  perish.  It 
is  almost  impossible  today  to  find  a  pure-breed 


THE  CAPTAIN  OF  INDUSTRY     83 

example  of  the  dog  that  spread  the  name  of 
the  island  to  the  ends  of  the  earth.  Such  dog§ 
as  there  are  are  remarkably  intelligent  and 
make  excellent  messengers  between  a  man  at 
work  and  his  house. 

The  **  Southerners  "  go  to  the  Grand  Banks 
for  their  fishing ;  the  others  go  to  the  Labrador. 
The  three  classes  of  fishermen  are  the  shore 
fishermen,  the  "  bankers,"  and  the  "  floaters  " 
— those  of  the  Labrador.  Ordinarily  the 
catch  is  reckoned  by  quintals  (pronounced 
kentals)  of  112  pounds.  Those  who  live  on 
the  Labrador  coast  the  winter  through  are 
known  as  the  "  liveyers  '* — the  live-heres — ^and 
those  who  come  regularly  to  the  fishing  are 
"  stationers  "  or  "  planters." 

During  the  war  big  prices  have  been  realized 
for  the  fish,  and  unprecedented  prosperity  has 
come  to  the  fishermen.  The  growth  in  the 
number  of  motor-boats  is  an  index  of  this 
condition,  though  with  gasoline  at  70  cents  a 
gallon  on  the  Labrador  (for  the  imperial 
gallon,  slightly  larger  than  ours),  the  question 
of  fuel  has  been  a  disturbing  one  to  many.  Of 
late  much  of  the  fish  has  been  marketed  on 
favourable  terms  in  the  United  States  and 
Canada,  but  before  this  the  preferred  markets 
in  order  have  been  Spain  and  Portugal,  Brazil 


84   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

and  the  West  Indies.  The  three  grades 
recognized,  from  the  best  to  the  lowest,  are 
"merchantable,"  "Madeira,"  and  "West  In- 
dies" ("West  Injies"),  the  last-named  for 
the  negroes. 

An  industry  of  growing  importance  to  the 
future  of  the  Grenfell  mission  is  the  manu- 
facture and  sale  of  "  hooked  "  rugs  by  the 
women  trained  at  the  industrial  school  at  St. 
Anthony.  Large  department  stores  in  the 
United  States  have  begun  to  buy  these  rugs 
in  considerable  quantities,  and  the  demand  is 
lively  and  increasing. 

The  Doctor's  delightful  sense  of  humour 
comes  to  the  fore  in  his  designs  for  these 
rugs,  made  of  rags  worked  through  canvas. 
The  dyes  are  vivid  green^  blue,  red,  black, 
brown — the  white  rivals  the  driven  snow,  and 
the  workmanship  is  of  the  best.  A  favourite 
pattern  shows  the  dogs  harnessed  to  the 
komatik  eager  to  be  off,  turning  in  the  traces 
as  if  to  ask  questions  of  the  driver,  their  atti- 
tude alert  and  alive,  while  their  two  masters 
standing  by  the  baggage  on  the  komatik,  in 
hoods  and  heavy  parkas  (blouses)  rimmed 
with  red  and  blue,  are  discussing  the  route  to 
take  and  pointing  with  their  mittened  hands. 
Or  the  design  may  show  Eskimoes  stealthily 


THE   CAPTAIN  OF   INDUSTRY     85 

stalking  polar  bears  upon  an  ice-pan  of  a 
wondrous  green  at  the  edges.  There  is  a 
glorious  Tumerian  sunset  in  the  background; 
the  sea  bristles  with  bergs  arched  and  pin- 
nacled. The  wary  hunters  approach  their 
hapless  quarry  in  a  kyak.  One  is  paddling 
and  the  other  has  the  rifle  across  his  knees, 
and  the  polar  bears  are  nervously  pacing  the 
ice-pan  as  though  conscious  of  the  fate  im- 
pending. Another  motif  in  these  diverting 
rugs — which  are  often  used  for  wall  adorn- 
ments instead  of  floor-covering — is  a  stately 
procession  of  three  bears  uphill  past  the  solemn 
green  sentinels  of  pagoda-like  fir  trees.  What 
an  improvement  these  designs  are  over  the 
former  rugs  which  showed  meaningless 
blotches  of  pink  and  green  that  miglit  have 
been  thrown  at  one  another,  as  if  a  mason's 
trowel  had  splashed  them  there! 

Since  the  Labrador  is  innocent  in  most 
places  of  anything  like  a  store  where  you  can 
go  to  the  counter,  lay  down  your  money  and 
ask  for  what  you  want,  the  nearest  thing  the 
women  know  to  the  luxury  of  a  shopping- 
expedition  or  a  bargain-sale  is  a  chance  to  ex- 
change firewood  or  fish  for  the  old  clothing 
carried  on  her  missionary  journeys  by  the 
^trathcona. 


86   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

"Why  isn't  this  clothing  given  away?" 
someone  may  query  unthinkingly. 

The  object  of  the  mission  is  not  to  pau- 
perize, and  the  pride  of  the  people  themselves 
in  most  cases  forbids  the  acceptance  of  an 
outright  gift. 

To  preserve  self-respect  by  the  exchange  of 
a  quid  pro  quo,  some  of  the  clothing  con- 
tributed by  friends  in  the  States  and  elsewhere 
is  allocated  to  the  fishermen's  families  in  re- 
turn for  the  supplies  of  firewood.  The  value 
varies  according  to  the  place  where  the  wood 
is  cut  and  piled.  It  may  be  worth  $7  a  cord 
on  a  certain  point  or  $3  at  the  bottom  of  a 
bay.  (Cutting  the  wood  is  called  "cleaving 
the  splits.")  The  payment  must  be  very 
carefully  apportioned,  so  that  Mrs.  B.  shall 
not  have  more  or  better  than  Mrs.  A. — or  else 
there  will  be  wailing  and  gnashing  and  heart- 
burning after  the  boat  weighs  anchor. 

Before  making  the  rounds  of  the  Straits  or 
of  White  Bay,  or  going  on  the  long  trail  down 
North,  or  wherever  else  the  Strathcona  may 
be  faring  on  her  mission,  the  big  boxes  of 
wearables  are  opened  on  the  deck  and  stored  in 
a  pinched  triangular  stateroom  forward  of  the 
saloon.  There  are  quantities  of  clothing  for 
men — overcoats,   sweaters  of  priceless  wool, 


THE  CAPTAIN  OF  INDUSTRY     87 

reefers,  peajackets,  shooting-coats,  dressing- 
gowns,  underwear — some  of  it  brand  new  and 
most  of  it  thick  and  good;  there  are  woolen 
socks  excellently  made  by  many  loving  hands, 
shoes  joined  by  the  laces  or  buttoned  together, 
trousers,  jackets,  whole  suits  more  or  less  in 
disrepair  but  capable  of  conversion  to  all  sorts 
of  useful  ends.  Generally  the  Doctor  and 
Mrs.  Grenfell  find  a  pretext  for  giving  some 
of  the  clothing  to  a  needy  family  even  when 
the  fiction  of  payment  in  kind  is  not  main- 
tained. Rarely  does  the  article  offered — ^let 
us  say  a  hooked  rug  in  garish  colours — meet 
the  value  of  the  garments  that  are  given.  But 
the  important  thing  is  that  the  recipient  is 
made  to  feel  that  he  pays  for  what  he  gets 
and  is  not  a  pauper. 

There  is  ever  a  want  of  clothing  for  the 
women  and  children.  Few  complete  dresses 
for  women  find  their  way  to  the  Strathcona's 
storeroom.  There  are  not  nearly  enough 
garments  for  babies  or  suits  for  little  boys. 
Women's  underclothing  is  badly  needed.  But 
most  of  those  who  come  aboard  in  quest  of 
clothing  are  grateful  for  whatever  is  given 
them  and  make  no  fuss.  They  will  ingeni- 
ously adapt  a  shirt  into  a  dress  for  Susy,  and 
cut  a  big  man's  trousers  in  twain  for  her  two 


'88   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

small  brothers.  The  Northern  housewife 
learns  to  make  much  of  little  in  the  way  of 
textile  materials.  A  barrel  of  magazines  and 
cards  and  picture  scrap-books  shielded  with 
canvas,  stands  at  the  head  of  the  companion 
way.  Bless  whoever  pasted  in  the  stories  and 
pictures  on  the  strong  sheets  of  brown  cart- 
ridge-paper! Those  will  be  pored  over  by 
lamp-light  from  cottage  to  cottage  till  they 
fall  apart,  just  as  the  wooden  boxes  of  books 
carried  aboard  for  circulating  libraries  will 
provide  most  of  the  life  intellectual  all  winter 
long  for  many  a  village.  Many  of  the  fisher- 
men's families  from  the  father  down  are 
unlettered,  but  those  who  can  read  and  write 
make  up  for  it  by  their  intellectual  activity, 
and  even  the  little  boys  sometimes  display  a 
nimbleness  of  wit  and  fancy  altogether  de- 
lightful. They  will  sing  you  a  song  or  tell 
you  a  fairy-tale  with  a  naivete  foreign  to  the 
American  small  boy. 

A  woman  came  aboard  with  her  husband — 
pale,  thin,  forlorn  she  was — and  asked  for 
clothing  for  him.  She  held  each  garment 
critically  to  the  light,  and  somewhat  disdain- 
fully rejected  any  that  showed  signs  of  mend- 
ing. Finally  I  said :  "  You're  not  taking 
anything    for    yourself.      Don't    you    need 


THE   CAPTAIN  OF  INDUSTRY     89 

something?"  I  knew  the  pitiful  huddle  of 
fishermen's  houses  ashore  from  which  she 
came — ^the  entire  population  of  the  settlement 
was  141,  not  counting  the  vociferous  array  of 
Eskimo  dogs  that  greeted  us  when  we  landed. 

"I'd  like  a  dress,"  she  admitted— "  for 
street  wear," 

I  thought  of  the  straggling  path  amid  the 
rocks  where  the  dogs  growled  and  bristled, 
but  I  did  not  smile.  For  I  realized  what  this 
chance  to  go  shopping  meant  to  her  isolated 
life.  In  the  city  she  would  have  had  huge 
warerooms  and  piled  counters  from  which  to 
make  a  choice.  Here  two  bunks,  a  barrel  and 
a  canvas  bag  held  the  whole  stock  in  trade. 

She  rejected  a  sleeveless  ball  gown  of 
burgundy.  "  I  must  have  black,"  she  said — 
"  we  lost  a  son  in  the  war." 

The  husband  began  to  apologize  for  the 
trouble  they  caused.  But  we  were  more  than 
ever  bound  to  please  them  now.  All  the  new 
skirts  were  found  to  be  too  short  or  too  long 
or  too  gay  or  too  youthful  or  something  else, 
and  the  upshot  of  the  dickering  was  that  two 
pairs  of  golfer's  breeches  were  given  in  lieu 
of  proper  habiliments  for  a  poor,  lonely 
woman  in  Labrador.  They  could  be  cut  down, 
she  explained,  for  her  boys. 


90   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

There  isn't  much  for  a  woman,  in  most  of 
these  places,  but  cooking  and  scrubbing  the 
floor  and  minding  the  baby — something  Hke 
the  Kaiser's  ideal  of  feminine  existence.  And 
when  the  floor  is  clean,  booted  fishermen 
come  in  and  spit  upon  it  even  though  the  white 
plague  is  plainly  written  in  the  children's 
faces. 

A  new  chapter  in  the  industrial  history  of 
the  Labrador  will  be  written  when  it  becomes 
possible  to  utilize  the  vast  supply  of  news-print 
available  from  the  pulp-wood  of  the  Labrador 
"  hinterland,"  even  as  Northcliffe  is  getting 
paper  for  his  many  publications  from  the  plant 
at  Grand  Falls  in  Northern  Newfoundland. 
The  difficulty,  of  course,  will  be  to  get  the 
timber  away  from  the  coast  in  the  short  season 
when  the  land  is  released  from  the  grip  of  the 
ice-pack.  But  the  great  demand  for  news- 
print which  leads  to  anxious  examination  and 
utilization  of  the  supplies  of  Alaska  and  Fin- 
land cannot  much  longer  neglect  the  available 
resources  so  near  at  hand  on  the  coast  of  the 
North  Atlantic. 

At  Humbermouth  it  was  my  good  fortune 
to  encounter  Captain  Daniel  Owen,  of  Annap- 
olis Royal,  Nova  Scotia,  Captain  of  the  H.  V. 
Greene    Labrador    Aerial    Expedition.      The 


THE  CAPTAIN  OF  INDUSTRY     91 

little  vessel  Miranda  had  limped  in  on  her  way 
to  Halifax,  to  get  her  boiler  mended. 

Captain  Owen,  himself,  deserves  more  than 
passing  mention,  A  member  of  the  Royal 
Flying  Corps,  he  had  his  left  eye  shot  out  in 
combat  with  five  German  planes  that  brought 
him  to  the  ground  60  miles  within  their  lines. 
The  observer's  leg  was  shattered  in  nine  places 
by  their  fire.  There  followed  a  sojourn  of 
seven  months  in  three  German  prison-camps. 
The  chivalrous  surgeon  who  was  first  to 
operate  on  Captain  Owen's  comrade  amused 
himself  and  the  nurses  by  twisting  bits  of  bone 
about  in  the  leg,  laughing,  while  the  nurses 
laughed  too,  at  the  patient's  agony. 

Flying  at  a  height  of  2,000  to  8,700  feet, 
Captain  Owen's  party  in  Labrador  added  to 
the  industrial  map  1,500,000  acres  (about 
2,300  square  miles)  of  land  timbered  with  firs 
and  spruces  suitable  for  pulp-wood,  the  prop- 
erty lying  on  the  Alexis,  St.  Louis  and  Gilbert 
Rivers  about  15  miles  north  of  Battle  Harbour. 
This  tract  will,  it  is  estimated,  produce  as 
much  as  115  cords  to  the  acre  for  a  maximum, 
and  on  the  average  40  to  50  cords.  15,000 
photographs  were  taken,  and  moving  pictures 
also  were  made.  The  aerodrome  was  28  miles 
up  the  Alexis  River,  and  according  to  Captain 


92   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

Owen  it  was  an  extremely  serious  matter  to 
find  the  way  back  to  it  each  time  after  a  flight 
for  there  was  no  other  suitable  place  to  land 
anywhere  in  the  neighbourhood.  "  I  never  felt 
so  anxious  for  the  return  of  an  aeroplane  in 
the  Western  Front  as  I  felt  for  the  safety  of 
ours,"  he  said. 

The  flying  took  place  on  five  different  days 
— and  in  that  time  as  much  was  accomplished 
as  might  have  been  done  in  from  six  to  ten 
years  of  the  usual  land  cruising  which — in 
sample  areas — was  used  to  check  up  the  results 
of  the  airmen. 

The  propeller  of  the  Curtiss  biplane  was  a 
mass  of  blood  from  the  flies  it  sucked  in.  Dr. 
Murdock  Graham,  second  in  command,  kept 
some  of  these  flies  in  a  bottle  as  souvenirs,  and 
they  were  portentous  insects. 

"  We  enjoyed  nothing  more,"  said  Dr. 
Graham,  "  than  an  evening  spent  with  Dr. 
Grenfell  at  Battle  Harbour  where,  lolling  at 
ease  in  corduroy  and  his  old  Queen's  College 
blazer  with  the  insignia  over  the  left  breast- 
pocket, pulling  a  corn-cob  pipe,  he  spun  one 
yarn  after  another  of  the  life  at  the  Front 
with  the  Harvard  contingent  in  191 5-16. 

"  Murphy,  the  mail-man  from  Battle  Har- 
bour, friend  of  the  Grenfell  mission,  friend  of 


THE   CAPTAIN  OF  INDUSTRY     93 

everybody,  is  a  man  worth  knowing.  I  can 
hear  now  his  genial  'Does  ye  smoke,  boy? 
Has  ye  any  on  ye  ?  Does  ye  mind,  boy?  '  He 
said  to  one  of  our  Greene  Expedition  doctors, 
'Doctor,  are  all  the  Americans  like  ye?  Ye 
has  a  kind  word  for  everybody.  Has  ye  any 
tobacco?'  'By  gorry,  that's  fine,'  he  said  of 
the  aeroplane.  'How  do  it  do  it?'  He  was 
as  modest  as  he  was  plucky.  '  I  don't  want  to 
go  and  eat  with  all  those  gentlemen,  with  their 
fine  clothes  on,'  he  would  say.  Of  one  of  the 
young  '  liveyeres  '  he  remarked :  *  If  he  had 
the  learn  there'd  be  a  fine  job  for  him  ' — which 
alas!  is  true  of  so  many  on  the  Labrador. 

"  No  member  of  our  expedition  heard  any 
swearing  from  the  forty  men  we  employed — 
with  the  exception  of  a  single  Newfound- 
lander. I  asked  one  of  the  men  how  they  came 
to  be  so  clean  of  profanity,  and  he  answered 
simply:  'We  doesn't  make  a  practice  of  that, 
we  doesn't.' 

"  At  Williams  Harbour  on  the  Alexis  River 
there  was  three  weeks'  schooling  by  a  visiting 
teacher  from  the  Grenfell  mission.  In  two 
families  with  a  joint  membership  of  eighteen 
one  person  could  read  and  write. 

"  They  have  had  no  minister  since  the  war 
and  in  the  winter  the  bottom  falls  out  of  every- 


94   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

thing.  The  people  on  the  rivers  have  no  doctor 
for  a  year  and  a  half  and  two  years  at  a 
time.  At  Williams  Harbour  they  swarmed  to 
Dr.  Twiss  and  Dr.  MacDonald.  One  woman 
in  desperation  had  been  treating  pneumonia 
with  salt-water,  snow  and  white  moss. 

"  Dr.  Grenfell  and  his  people  have  more 
than  they  can  do.  We  all  of  us  realize  today 
as  we  never  understood  before  the  meaning  to 
the  people  of  the  North  of  the  presence  of 
Grenfell  and  his  people  among  them.  We 
caught  the  spirit  of  the  work  inevitably,  and 
tried  to  do  what  good  we  could  while  we  were 
there. 

"  The  folk  of  the  Alexis  and  the  St.  Louis 
River  districts,  as  a  rule,  can't  afford  the  price 
of  gas  to  go  to  Battle  Harbour.  It's  a  day's 
run,  and  there's  nobody  to  mind  their  cod- 
traps  when  they're  away.  So  one  can  imagine 
how  completely  they'd  be  shut  out  of  the  world 
but  for  the  contacts  which  the  mission  provides 
even  at  such  long  intervals. 

"  William  Russell  is  the  grand  old  man  of 
Williams  Harbour.  He  is  the  most-travelled 
and  the  best-educated  man  of  those  parts,  and 
he  represents  the  finest  type  of  patriarch.  He 
never  saw  a  horse  or  a  cow  or  an  automobile; 
he  has  never  been  south  of  Battle  Harbour, 


THE   CAPTAIN  OF  INDUSTRY     95 

though  he  has  visited  that  diminutive  settle- 
ment four  times.  He  was  dumfounded  at  our 
aeroplane. 

"  In  his  family  the  father's  word  was  law 
to  the  twelve  children.  They  never  thought 
of  questioning  his  authority.  They  were  the 
best  behaved  and  most  dutiful  children  I  have 
ever  seen.  Their  obedience  was  absolute,  and 
their  manner  to  strangers  was  deferential. 
They  always  said  '  Yes,  sir,'  and  '  No,  sir,* 
most  politely. 

"  At  his  house  thirty-one  gathered  to  hear 
the  gramophone — for  the  first  time.  They 
were  packed  in  as  tight  as  could  be,  choking 
the  room  with  their  tobacco-smoke.  The  first 
night  they  were  silent.  The  next  night  they 
were  excited,  and  on  the  third  they  became 
hilarious. 

"  As  I  said,  following  the  Grenfell  example, 
we  did  what  doctoring  we  could  on  the  side. 
The  constant  diet  of  bread  and  tea,  tea  and 
bread  is  hard  on  the  teeth.  There  is  much 
pyorrhea  due  to  this  diet,  to  limestone  in  the 
water,  and  to  failure  to  clean  the  teeth.  At 
Blanc  Sablon  we  treated  a  little  boy  who  had 
suffered  for  three  weeks  with  the  toothache. 
It  was  a  simple  case  of  congested  pulp.  The 
relief  was  immediate.    It  is  a  joy  and  a  reward 


96   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

to  behold  the  gratitude  of  those  who  are 
helped. 

"  I  tell  you  if  these  people  who  question  the 
value  of  Grenfell's  work,  or  wonder  why  he 
chooses  to  spend  his  life  in  bleak  and  barren 
places,  could  just  see  his  *  parishioners ' 
and  know  their  gratitude  toward  their  bene- 
factors, they  would  understand. 

"  There  was  a  picturesque  soul  at  Blanc 
Sablon  who  asked  for  tobacco,  which  we  gave 
him.  He  was  never  off  the  coast.  I  don't 
know  where  he  had  heard  a  violin.  But  to 
make  some  return  to  us  for  the  smoke,  he  gave 
us  an  imitation  of  a  man  first  tuning  and  then 
playing  a  violin,  which  was  perfect  in  its  way." 


VI 

THE    SPORTSMAN 

AS  we  were  coming  off  to  the  Strathcona 
r\  one  evening,  the  Doctor,  bareheaded, 
pulling  at  the  oars  with  the  zest  of  a 
schoolboy  on  a  holiday,  and  every  oar-dip 
making  a  running  flame  of  phosphorescence, 
said :  "At  college  we  worshipped  at  the  shrine 
of  athletics.  Of  course  that  wasn't  right,  but 
it  did  establish  a  standard — it  did  teach  a  man 
that  he  must  keep  his  body  under  if  he  would 
be  physically  fit.  I  realized  that  if  I  wanted 
to  win  I  couldn't  afford  to  lose  an  ounce,  and 
so  I  was  a  rigid  Spartan  with  myself.  The 
others  sometimes  laughed  at  me  as  a  goody- 
goody,  but  they  saw  that  I  could  do  things 
that  couldn't  be  done  by  those  who  indulged 
in  wild  flings  of  dissipation. 

"  My  schooling  before  Oxford  I  now  feel 
was  wretched.  They  didn't  teach  me  how  to 
learn.  The  teachers  themselves  were  mediocre. 
They  may  have  had  a  smattering  of  the  classics 
r— but  that  doesn't  constitute  fitness  to  teach. 
97 


98   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

Have  you  read  the  chapter  on  education  in 
H.  G.  Well's  'Joan  and  Peter'?  That  strikes 
me  as  true. 

"I'm  glad  my  orphan  children  at  St.  An- 
thony are  getting  the  right  kind  of  training 
from  those  who  understand  their  business." 

The  Doctor  still  cherishes  the  insignia  of 
rowing  and  athletic  clubs  to  which  he  was 
attached  while  at  Oxford.  One  of  his  pet  coats 
wears  the  initials  "  O.  U.  R.  F.  C."  for  the 
Oxford  University  Rugby  Football  Club.  He 
also  stroked  the  Torpid  crew,  and  the  crew 
of  the  London  Hospital. 

He  hates — in  fact,  he  refuses,  like  Peter 
Pan — to  grow  up  or  to  grow  old.  "  Isn't  it  too 
bad  that  just  when  our  minds  have  struck  their 
stride  and  are  doing  their  best  work  we  should 
have  to  end  it  all  ?  "  Not  that  he  has  the  least 
fear  of  Death.  In  the  country  of  his  loving 
labour,  the  fisher-folk  face  Death  so  often  in 
their  lawful  occasions,  for  the  sake  of  you  and 
me  who  enjoy  the  savour  of  the  codfish  and  the 
lobster,  that  when  Death  finally  comes  he 
comes  not  as  a  dark  and  awful  figure  but  as 
a  familiar  and  a  friend. 

The  conflict  of  elemental  forces  in  nature 
finds  at  once  an  echo  in  the  breast  of  him  who 
has  met  "  witli  a  frolic  heart "  every  mood  and 


^»k  '■*^ 

w 

p 
o 


!^  O 
O  Q 
O 

W 

< 
W 


THE  SPORTSMAN  99 

tense  of  sky  and  sea  "  down  north."  At 
Pleasure  Harbour  the  sunset  amid  dark  purple 
clouds  edged  with  a  rosy  fleece  brought  "  vital 
feelings  of  delight "  :  and  when  we  came 
nearest  the  Dominion's  northern  tip  the  Doctor 
said :  "  I  wish  you  could  see  the  strait  ice  and 
the  Atlantic  ice  fight  at  Cape  Bauld.  They  go 
at  each  other  hammer  and  tongs,  with  a  roar- 
ing and  rending  Hke  huge  wild  animals, 
rampant  and  foaming  and  clashing  their 
tusks." 

On  a  foggy,  super-saturated  day,  the  sails 
and  the  deck  beaded  and  dripping,  he  will 
fairly  rub  his  hands  in  ecstasy  and  exclaim : 
"  Oh,  what  a  fine  day !  "  Or  he  will  thrust  his 
ruddy  countenance  out  of  his  chart-room  door 
to  call :    "  Isn't  it  great  to  be  alive?  " 

Off  Cape  Norman,  when  the  foghorn  was 
blaspheming  and  the  sea  ran  high,  I  tried  to  gtt 
the  Doctor  to  concede  that  it  was  half  a  gale, 
but  he  would  only  admit  that  it  was  a  "  nice 
breeze."  The  new  topsail  stubbornly  declined 
to  blossom  out  as  it  should,  though  the  five 
other  sails  were  in  full  bloom.  "  We'll  burst 
it  out,"  said  the  Doctor.  The  offending  sail 
was  forthwith  hauled  down  and  stretched  like 
a  sick  man  on  the  deck;  then  it  was  tied  in 
three   places   with   tarry   cords,   the   Doctor 


100  GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

scurried  up  the  mast,  the  sail  was  raised  into 
place  by  means  of  the  clanking  winch,  and 
then,  with  violent  tugs  of  the  fierce  wind  like 
a  fish  plucking  at  a  tempting  bait  the  three 
confining  strings  snapped  in  explosive  succes- 
sion and  like  a  flag  unfurling  the  sail  sprang 
out  to  the  breeze.  We  raised  a  cheer  as 
the  perceptible  lift  of  the  additional  sail-cloth 
thrilled  the  timbers  underfoot. 

You'd  hear  him  trotting  about  the  deck  in 
the  cool  dawn  inquiring  about  steam  or  tide 
and  humming  softly  (or  lifting  with  the 
fervour  of  a  sailor's  chantey),  that  favourite 
Newfoundland  hymn,  written  by  a  Newfound- 
lander, "  We  love  the  place,  O  God,  wherein 
thine  honour  dwells." 

In  the  wheelhouse  as  he  looks  out  over  the 
sea  and  guides  the  prow,  as  if  it  were  a  sculp- 
tor's chisel,  through  calm  or  storm,  there  comes 
into  his  eyes  a  look  as  of  communing  with  a 
far  country:  his  soul  has  gone  to  a  secret, 
distant  coast  where  no  man  and  but  one 
woman  can  follow. 

Sometimes  of  an  evening  the  Doctor  brought 
out  the  chessboard  and  I  saw  another  phase 
of  his  versatile  entity — his  fondness  for  an  in- 
door game  that  is  of  science  and  not  blind 
chance.     The  red  and  white  ivory  chessmen, 


THE  SPORTSMAN  101 

in  deference  to  the  staggering  ship,  had  sea- 
legs  in  the  shape  of  pegs  attaching  them  to  the 
board.  Two  missing  pawns — "  prawns,"  the 
Doctor  humorously  styled  them — had  as  sub- 
stitutes bits  of  a  red  birthday  candle,  and  two 
of  the  rooks  were  made  of  green  modelling- 
wax  (plasticine). 

"  I  love  to  attack,"  said  the  Doctor,  and  his 
tactics  proved  that  he  meant  what  he  said.  He 
has  what  Lord  Northcliffe  once  named  to  me 
as  the  capital  secret  of  success— -concentration. 

When  he  has  once  moved  a  piece  forward  he 
almost  never  moves  it  back  again.  He  likes 
to  go  ahead.  He  seeks  to  get  his  pieces  out  and 
into  action,  and  a  defensive,  waiting  game — 
the  strategy  of  Fabius  the  Cunctator — is  not 
for  him. 

Once  in  a  while  he  defers  sufficiently  to  the 
conventions  to  move  out  the  King's  pawn  at 
the  start,  but  often  his  initial  move  is  that  of 
a  pawn  at  the  side  of  the  board.  He  works 
the  pawns  hard  and  gives  them  a  new  signifi- 
cance. His  delight  is  to  march  a  little  platoon 
of  them  against  the  enemy — preferably  against 
the  bishops.  Somehow  the  bishops  seem  to 
lose  their  heads  when  confronted  by  these 
minor  adversaries. 

If  you  get  him  into  a  tight  corner,  the  oppo- 


102  GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

sition  stiffens — the  greater  the  odds  the  more 
vertebral  his  attitude. 

"  I  make  it  a  rule  to  go  ahead  if  I  possibly 
can,  and  not  to  be  driven  back."  This  remark 
of  his  over  the  board  of  the  mimic  fray  applies 
just  as  well  to  his  constant  strife  with  the  sea 
to  get  where  he  is  wanted — as  on  the  present 
occasion  when  we  were  threading  the  needle's 
eye  of  the  rocky  outlet  at  Carpoon. 

The  Doctor  has  the  real  chess  mind — the 
mind  that  surveys  and  weighs  and  analyzes — 
with  the  uncanny  faculty  of  looking  many 
moves  ahead,  of  balancing  all  the  alternatives, 
of  remembering  the  disposal  of  the  forces  at 
a  previous  stage  of  the  game.  He  becomes 
so  completely  immersed  in  the  playing — 
though  he  rarely  finds  an  antagonist — that  it 
is  a  real  rest  to  him  after  the  teeming  day, 
where  many  a  man  would  only  find  it  a  culmi- 
nant exhaustion.  "  Isn't  it  queer,"  he  ob- 
served, that  most  men  who  are  good  at  this 
game  aren't  good  for  much  else  ?  " 

His  use  of  the  pawns  in  chess  is  like  his  use 
of  the  weaker  reeds  among  men  in  his  day's 
work.  Since  he  cannot  always  get  the  best 
(though  his  hand-picked  helpers  at  St.  An- 
thony, Battle  Harbour  and  elsewhere  are  as  a 
rule  exceptionally  able),  he  learns  to  use  the 


THE  SPORTSMAN  103 

inferior  and  the  lesser,  and  with  exemplary 
gentleness  and  patience  he  keeps  his  temper  and 
lets  them  think  they  are  assisting  though  they 
may  be  all  but  hindering.  He  gives  you  to 
feel  that  if  you  hold  a  basin  or  sharpen  a  knife 
or  fetch  a  bottle  or  bring  him  a  chair  you  are 
of  real  value  in  the  performance  of  an  opera- 
tion— even  if  the  basin  was  upset  and  the  knife 
was  dull  and  the  bottle  wasn't  the  one  and  the 
chair  had  a  broken  leg. 

"  Christ  used  ordinary  men,"  he  remarked. 
"  He  was  a  carpenter,  and  I  try  to  teach  people 
that  he  was  a  good  sportsman." 

All  through  his  chess  games,  too,  runs  tht 
Oxford  principle  of  sport  for  its  own  sake: 
he  wins,  but  the  strife  is  more  than  the  victory. 
He  is  never  vainglorious  when  the  checkmate 
comes;  he  is  neither  unduly  elated  by  success 
nor  depressed  by  adversity — indeed,  his  enjoy- 
ment is  keenest  when  he  is  beset.  He  shows 
then  the  same  strain  that  comes  out  when  the 
ship  is  anchored  and  Mate  Albert  Ash  pokes 
his  head  in  and  says  :  "If  she  drags,  we've  got 
but  one  chain  out !  "  Then  he  will  say  nothing, 
or  with  a  humorous  twinkle  he  will  cry  in 
mock  despair :  "  All  is  lost !  "  or  "  if  you  knew 
how  little  water  there  was  under  her  you  would 
be  scared ! " — and  then  he  will  go  on  with 


104  GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

what  he  is  doing.  Whether  it  is  the  chessboard 
or  life's  battlefield,  he  plays  the  game. 

On  the  end  of  a  hackmatack  (juniper)  log 
lying  on  the  deck  for  firewood  I  pencilled  for 
fun :  "  The  Log  of  the  Strathcona."  The 
Doctor  saw  it,  laughed,  and  got  a  buck-saw. 
Two  fishermen  clambered  over  the  rail  be- 
tween him  and  the  woodpile,  to  get  zinc  oint- 
ment and  advice.  When  he  had  "  fixed  them 
up  "  he  sawed  off  the  log-end,  and  drew  a  pic- 
ture of  the  Strathcona — an  entirely  correct 
picture,  of  course,  as  far  as  it  went — and  then 
put  his  signature  (a  la  Whistler  butterfly)  in 
the  form  of  a  roly-poly  elf,  as  rotund  as  a 
dollar.  "  I  hke  to  draw  myself  stout  and 
round,"  he  laughed.  The  strange  gnome  he 
drew  was  the  very  antithesis  of  his  own  lithe, 
spare,  close-knit  figure. 

So  good  a  playmate  and  so  firm  a  master — 
so  rare  a  combination  of  gentleness  and 
strength,  of  self-respect  and  rollicking  fun  is 
difficult  to  match  in  real  life  or  in  biographic 
literature. 

Were  one  to  seek  a  historic  parallel  for 
Grenfell  one  might  not  go  far  wrong  in  pick- 
ing Xenophon.  Xenophon  was  a  leader  who 
pointed  the  way  not  from  the  rear  but  from 
the  head  of  the  column,  and  asked  of  his  men 


THE  SPORTSMAN  106 

nothing  that  he  would  not  do  himself.  The 
reader  of  the  "  Anabasis  "  will  remember  that 
Xenophon  awoke  in  the  night  and  asked  him- 
self "  Why  do  I  He  here?  For  the  night  goes 
forward.  And  with  the  morn  it  is  probable 
that  the  enemy  will  come."  Even  so,  Grenfell 
feels  that  he  must  do  the  works  of  the  Master 
while  it  is  yet  day,  for  all  too  soon  the  night 
Cometh  when  no  man  can  work. 

Xenophon  had  sedition  on  his  hands,  and 
his  men  would  not  go  out  into  the  snows  of 
the  mountains  of  Armenia  and  cut  the  wood. 
So  he  left  his  tent  and  seized  an  ax  and  hewed 
so  valorously  that  they  were  shamed  into 
following  suit.  That  is  just  what  Wilfred 
Grenfell  would  have  done:  it  is  what  his  for- 
bear Sir  Richard  Grenville  would  have  done. 
In  such  ways  as  this  when  the  hour  strikes 
the  born  leader  of  men  asserts  himself  and 
takes  command. 


/ 


VII 

THE  MAN  OF   SCIENCE 

THE  Doctor  admires  certain  of  his 
scientific  colleagues  greatly:  he  is 
candidly  a  hero-worshipper.  "  I  love 
Cushing  and  Finney,"  he  says  outspokenly  of 
the  noted  Harvard  and  Jo'hns  Hopkins  sur- 
geons. A  clinic  by  Dr.  George  de  Schweinitz 
or  an  operation  by  Dr.  John  B.  Deaver  is  a 
rare  treat  to  him.  Sir  Frederick  Treves,  the 
great  English  surgeon,  has  been  among  his 
closest  friends  since  Grenfell  served  under  him 
in  a  London  hospital:  he  has  leaned  on  him 
always  for  perceptive  advice  and  sympathy  un- 
failing. It  is  one  of  the  paramount  satisfac- 
tions of  his  life  to  meet  other  minds  in  his 
profession  that  stimulate  his  own.  In  the 
ceaseless  round  of  his  activities  little  time  is 
left  him  to  read  books:  but  if  he  could  he 
would  enjoy  no  pastime  more  than  to  browse 
in  a  well-chosen  library.  The  victories  of 
science  hold  for  him  the  fascination  of 
romance. 

106 


THE  MAN  OF  SCIENCE  107 

The  discovery  of  the  electron,  in  his  opinion, 
might  make  it  possible  to  have  an  entire  city 
in  which  every  material  substance  should  be 
invisible.  "  There  is  no  reason  why  the  forces 
in  action  should  make  a  visible  city.  We  be- 
lieve today  in  the  unity  of  matter.  It  has 
almost  been  demonstrated  that  we  can  turn 
soda  into  coppier.  Uranium  passes  into 
raditmi.  Carrel  is  growing  living  protoplasm 
outside  the  body.  Adami  has  shown  how  an 
electric  stimulus  applied  to  the  ovum  of  frogs 
produces  twins.  The  electron  is  the  manifesta- 
tion of  force. 

"It  is  almost  certain  that  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  physical  life.  No  matter  could  exist 
without  movement — the  sort  of  movement  you 
behold  when  the  ^spinthari scope  throws  the 
radiations  from  bromide  of  radium  on  a 
fluorescent  screen.  If  there  is  no  physical  life, 
there  is  no  death.  So  many  things  exist  that 
we  do  not  see.  We  cannot  see  ether  or  weigh 
it,  but  we  know  that  it  exists.  There  is  a 
physical  explanation  of  the  resurrection.  The 
whole  universe  is  incessant  motion,  just  as 
sound  is  vibration — the  ordinary  C  with  256 
vibrations,  the  octave  with  512,  the  next  octave 
with  1,024  vibrations  to  the  second, 

"  Tin  is  a  mass  of  whirling  electrons.    Gold 


108  GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

is  composed  of  a  different  number  of  electrons. 
That's  why  we  can't  cross  from  one  to  the 
other." 

It  is  not  quite  fair  to  put  down  these  random 
remarks,  on  an  extremely  abstruse  matter — 
thrown  over  the  Doctor's  shoulder  as  he  flits 
about  a  village,  the  dogs  at  his  heels — without 
quoting  his  more  deliberate  formulation  of  his 
ideas  in  an  article  in  "  Toilers  of  the  Deep." 
In  that  article  he  writes: 

"If  chemistry  of  today  has  made  it  certain 
that  there  is  no  such  thing  in  the  human  body 
as  a  transcendental  entity  called  *  life,'  and 
every  function  and  every  organ  of  the  body 
can  be  chemically  or  physically  accounted  for, 
then  it  is  obvious  that  we  have  no  reason  to 
weep  for  it.  More  infinitely  marvellous  the 
more  we  learn  of  it,  so  marvellous  that  no  one 
can  begin  to  appreciate  it  but  the  man  of 
science,  it  helps  us  to  realize  how  easily  He 
who  clothed  us  with  it  can  provide  another 
equally  well  adapted  to  the  needs  of  that  which 
awaits  us  when  we  go  *  home.*  We  have 
learned  to  enlarge  our  physical  capacities,  our 
*  selves,'  the  microscope,  the  ultramicroscope, 
the  spectroscope,  the  electroscope,  the  spin- 
thariscope, the  ophthalmoscope,  the  fluoro- 
scope,  the  telescope,  and  other  man-made  ma- 


THE  MAN  OF  SCIENCE  109 

chines  have  made  the  natural  range  of  the 
eye  of  man  a  mere  bagatelle  compared  with 
what  it  now  commands  and  reveals.  The 
microphone,  the  megaphone,  the  audophone, 
the  wireless  and  other  machinery  have  as 
greatly  enlarged  our  command  of  the  field  of 
sound.  Space  has  been  largely  conquered  by 
electric  devices  for  telephoning,  telegraphing, 
and  motor  power.  On  the  land,  under  the 
sea,  in  the  air,  man  is  rapidly  acquiring  a 
mastery  that  is  miraculous. 

"  The  marvels  of  manufacture  are  miracles. 
Machinery  can  now  do  anything,  even  talk 
and  sing  far  beyond  the  powers  of  normal  hu- 
man capacities.  The  plants  and  animals  of 
normal  nature  can  be  improved  beyond 
recognition.  The  old  deserts  are  being  forced 
to  blossom  like  roses;  the  most  potent  govern- 
ing agencies  of  the  life  of  the  body,  like 
adrenalin,  can  be  made  from  coal  tar.  Seas 
are  linked  by  broad  water  pathways,  countries 
are  united  by  passages  through  mountains  and 
under  the  water.  We  can  see  through  solid 
bodies,  we  can  weigh  the  stars  in  balances,  we 
can  tell  their  composition  without  seeing 
them.  We  can  describe  the  nature  and  place 
of  unseen  heavenly  bodies,  and  know  the  exis- 
tence and  properties  of  elements  never  seen 


110  GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

or  heard  of.  We  know  that  movement  is  not 
a  characteristic  of  Hfe,  unless  we  are  to  believe 
that  the  very  rocks  are  alive,  for  we  can  see 
that  it  is  movement  alone  that  holds  their 
ultimate  atoms  together. 

"  The  mere  *  Me,'  the  resultant  of  all  past 
and  present  influences  on  the  *  I,'  is  so  mar- 
vellous, that  we  must  find  it  ever  increasingly 
impossible  to  conceive  that  we  are  the  products 
of  blind  chance,  or  the  sport  of  a  cruelty  so 
horrible  as  to  make  the  end  one  inconceivable 
tragedy. 

"  No,  if  science  teaches  that  there  is  no 
entity  called  *  life,'  and  it  seems  to  do  so,  I 
for  my  part  gladly  accept  it  as  yet  another 
tribute  at  the  feet  of  the  Master  Builder  who 
made  an|d  gave  my  spirit — mine,  if  you  please 
— a  spirit  so  insignificant,  so  unworthy,  such 
an  unspeakable  gift  as  that  of  a  body  with 
capacities  such  as  this  one,  to  be  the  mechanical 
temple  and  temporar)"^  garment  of  my  spirit, 
and  to  offer  me  a  chance  to  do  my  share  to 
help  this  wonderful  world.  *  No  life,'  says 
science,  '  there  is  no  life.'  But  a  knowledge 
more  reliable  than  current  knowledge,  that 
entered  the  world  with  the  advent  of  man,  and 
that  has  everywhere  in  every  race  of  mankind 
been   in   the   past  his  actually   most   valued 


THE  MAN  OF  SCIENCE  111 

possession,  replies  *  Yea,  and  there  is  no  death 
either.'  " 

One  day  his  morning  greeting  was: 
"  Nitrogen  is  gone !  "  **  Too  bad !  "  I  said. 
*'  You  can  search  me.  I  haven't  got  it."  *'  I 
mean,"  he  explained,  "  that  here  in  this  copy 
of  the  *  Journal  of  the  Royal  Astronomical  So- 
ciety of  Canada  '  Sir  Ernest  Rutherford  sets 
forth  the  theory  that  the  molecule  of  nitrogen 
is  a  heUum  universe  with  hydrogen  for  its 
satellites  and  helium  as  the  sun."  He  was  al- 
most as  much  interested  in  the  discovery  as  if  it 
were  a  hole  in  the  bottom  of  his  boat. 

"  I've  just  been  reading  a  magazine  article  on 
the  subject  of  psychic  research  by  Booth  Tark- 
ington,"  he  added  presently.  "  It's  well  written 
and  exceedingly  interesting.  Most  men  of 
science  have  been  convinced  of  the  reality  of  the 
spiritual  body." 

He  is  an  artist  of  no  slight  attainment  and  in 
his  home  at  St.  Anthony  specimens  of  his 
handicraft  abound,  but  not  obtrusively.  Dr. 
Grenfell  never  puts  anything  that  he  is  or  has 
done  on  view  to  be  admired. 

He  is  a  keen  ornithologist,  and  even  when 
he  is  at  top  speed  to  get  back  to  his  boat  and 
weigh  anchor  he  will  pause  to  note  the  friendly 
grackles  hopping  about  a  wharf  or  the  un- 


112  GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

fettered  grace  of  the  gyrations  of  the  creaking 
gulls.  He  is  a  collector  of  butterflies.  "  I 
was  out  driving  with  a  man  who  didn't  see 
the  butterflies  and  had  no  interest  in  them. 
Just  think  what  such  a  man  misses  in  his  life !  " 

He  also  collects  birds'  eggs,  flowering  plants 
(many  of  which  have  been  named  at  Cam- 
bridge), seaweed  and  shells.  The  great  book 
he  wrote  and  edited  on  Labrador  gives  a  clear 
idea  of  his  interest  in  the  geology  as  well  as 
the  fauna  and  flora  of  the  region. 

I  found  him  the  last  thing  at  night  at  St. 
Anthony  trying  to  discover  why  one  of  a  pair 
of  box  kites  he  had  made  wouldn't  remain 
aloft  as  it  should. 

He  is  perpetually  acquisitive  and  inquisitive ; 
the  diversity  of  his  interests  rivals  the  appetite 
of  Roosevelt  for  every  sort  of  information. 
Sir  Frederick  Treves  mourned  that  a  great 
surgeon  was  lost  to  London  when  Grenfell 
embarked  on  the  North  Sea  to  the  healing  and 
helping  of  fishermen.  But  Grenfell  has  be- 
come much  more  than  a  great  surgeon.  With 
all  that  he  is  and  does,  he  gives  to  every  part 
of  his  almost  boundless  field  of  interests  a 
careful,  methodical,  analytic  intellect.  Haste 
and  the  constant  pressure  of  his  over-driven 
life  have  not  made  him  superficial.    He  sets  a 


THE  MAN  OF  SCIENCE  113 

sail  with  the  same  care  he  gives  to  the  setting 
of  a  compound  fracture :  he  is  of  the  number 
of  those  who  beheve  that  there  is  but  one  right 
way  to  do  everything.  Of  such  is  the  kingdom 
of  science  and  of  inestimable  service. 


VIII 
THE   MAN   OF   LAW 

IN  his  capacity  as  magistrate,  the  Doctor 
never  sidesteps  trouble.  Law  in  his  part 
of  the  world  is  a  matter  not  merely  of  the 
letter  but  of  the  spirit — not  of  the  statute 
alone  but  of  shrewd  common  sense.  His  de- 
cisions are  luminous  with  a  Lincolnian  light 
of  acumen  and  sympathy  at  once.  He  lets  the 
jot  and  tittle — ^the  mint,  anise-seed  and  cummin 
— take  care  of  themselves,  and  considers  the 
real  significance  of  the  situation  and  the 
essential  nature  of  the  offence.  Red  tape  is 
not  the  important  thing,  and  the  imaginary 
dignity  of  an  invisible  judicial  ermine  is  not 
besmirched  because  Magistrate  Grenfell  dis- 
cusses the  case  with  a  culprit  as  a  father  might 
talk  things  over  with  a  son,  and  makes  it  plain 
why  wrong  was  done — if  it  was  done — ^and 
why  there  must  henceforth  be  a  different 
course  on  the  part  of  the  offender.  He  "  lays 
down  the  law "  not  as  if  it  were  a  Mosaic 
dispensation  from  a  beclouded  mountain  top, 
114 


THE  MAN  OF  LAW  115 

but  as  if  it  were  the  simple  and  discreet  way 
to  walk  for  God-fearing  and  reasonable  man- 
kind. To  him,  forever,  a  man's  own  soul  is 
a  matter  more  important  than  an  ordinance, 
and  he  spares  no  pains  to  make  his  meaning  so 
plain  that  the  dullest  apprehension  cannot  fail 
to  grasp  it.  You  will  see  Grenfell  at  his  best 
when — in  a  whipping  wind,  bareheaded, 
sweatered,  rubber-booted — ^he  stands  in  the 
clear  glitter  of  a  bracing  sunny  day  on  the 
beach  with  the  dogs  aprowl  around  him,  pains- 
takingly explaining  to  a  fisherman  why  it  is 
right  to  do  thus  and  reprehensible  to  do  other- 
wise. And  now  and  then  a  hearty  laugh  or 
a  timely  anecdote — Lincoln's  trait  again — 
clears  the  atmosphere.  Sometimes  there  are 
more  formidable  leets  and  law  courts  held 
among  the  whalemeat  barrels  and  the  firewood 
on  the  Strathcona :  but  more  often  it  is  a  plain 
matter  of  a  tete-a-tete  while  Grenfell  is  on  his 
rambling  rounds  of  a  hamlet  with  his  dilapi- 
dated leather  bag  of  instruments  and  medi- 
cines. 

Forteau  offered  its  own  problems  to  Dr. 
Grenfell,  the  Magistrate.  There  is  an  isle  not 
far  away  where  that  sometimes  toothsome  bird 
the  puffin  makes  his  home.  Fishermen  from 
Forteau,  hard  put  to  it  to  secure  anti-scorbutic 


116  GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

fresh  meat,  might  now  and  then  shoot  one  of 
the  birds,  and  the  duty  of  the  faithful  light- 
house keeper,  Captain  Cote,  an  appointed 
game-warden,  was  to  see  that  the  law's  majesty 
made  itself  respected.  One  day  Cote  caught 
a  hunter  red-handed.  "  By  what  warrant  do 
you  arrest  me  ?  "  said  the  man  behind  the  gun. 
"By  this!"  said  Cote,  flourishing  a  revolver. 
Is  a  magistrate  to  blame  if  he  believes  that 
common  sense  should  differentiate  between  a 
poor  fisherman  desperate  with  hunger,  and  a 
pot  hunter  who  commits  wholesale  murder 
among  the  eider-ducks  sitting  on  their  nests? 
Usually  it  is  the  poor  fisherman  who  is  fined 
and  made  to  give  up  his  gun,  because  he 
pleads  "  guilty,"  while  the  pot-hunter  who  un- 
blushingly  pleads  "  not  guilty  "  goes  scot-free. 
A  fisherman  at  Flower's  Cove  told  me  that 
a  late  lamented  coast  magistrate — who  got  half 
of  the  fines  he  imposed — was  making  "big 
money  "  from  his  calling.  He  fined  one  man 
$100  for  importing  a  second-hand  stove  with- 
out paying  customs  duties.  When  the  Strath- 
cona  hove  in  sight,  bearing  Dr.  Grenfell,  this 
profiteering  magistrate  weighed  anchor  jn 
haste,  and  in  a  heavy  beam  sea  and  shallow 
water  made  his  "  get-away." 

There  are  always  disputes  between  traders 


THE  MAN  OF  LAW  117 

and  fishermen  to  be  adjudicated.  Two  men 
within  an  hour  of  each  other  clambered  over 
the  rail  of  the  Strathcona  to  display  dire 
written  threats  of  wrath  to  come  from  the 
same  West  Coast  merchant,  in  a  court  sum- 
mons served  by  a  constable.  This  document, 
accompanying  a  bill  of  particulars,  says  that 
if  they  don't  pay  at  once  the  balance  due 
they'll  have  to  go  to  St.  John's  at  a  cost  of 
fifty  dollars  in  addition  to  whatever  the 
amount  may  be  which  the  law  assesses  against 
them.  It  isn't  just  the  amount  of  the  ticket 
to  St.  John's,  or  the  board  while  they  are 
there:  it's  the  loss  of  time  from  the  traps  that 
is  exacerbating. 

The  trader  isn't  in  the  wrong  just  because 
he  is  a  trader.  The  fisherman  hasn't  all  the 
right  on  his  side  by  the  fact  of  being  a  fisher- 
man, but  the  bookkeeping  of  these  traders 
seemed  to  be  at  very  loose  ends  indeed.  Long 
after  the  debtor  thought  he  had  paid  all  his 
debt,  in  cash  or  in  kind,  the  trader  unearthed 
on  the  books  items  of  1915,  1916  or  1917 
which  he  forgot  to  charge  for.  Here  they  bob 
up  like  a  bay  seal,  to  the  consternation  of  the 
man  who  thought  the  slate  had  been  sponged 
off  clean  "  far  away  and  long  ago." 

One  of  the  two  who  brought  their  present 


118  GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

perplexity  to  the  Doctor  had  had  the  mis- 
fortune to  lose  his  house  by  fire,  and  all  the 
trader's  receipts  therein,  so  that  he  had  no 
written  line  to  show  against  the  trader's  bill. 
I  found  out  later  that  the  trader's  daughters 
kept  the  books — in  fact,  I  saw  them  behind  the 
counter  at  their  father's  store — and  they  were 
said  to  be  indifferent  and  slovenly  misses  in- 
deed, who  used  their  thumbs  for  erasures  and 
made  as  many  mistakes  in  a  day's  work  as 
there  are  blueberries  on  Blomidon.  Perhaps 
they  were  in  love — but  their  hit-or-miss  ac- 
countancy meant  a  terrible  worrii^ent  for  sea- 
faring men  two  hundred  miles  distant,  and  a 
pother  of  trouble  for  Dr.  Grenfell  and  a  St. 
John's  lawyer — a  friend  of  the  Doctor's  who 
befriends  those  who  cannot  afford  or  do  not 
know  how  to  obtain  legal  advice. 


THE   MAN   OF  GOD 

IN  his  formal  addresses  Dr.  Grenfell  ex- 
emplifies the  homely,  pithy  eloquence  that 
comes  from  speaking  directly  "  to  men's 
business  and  bosoms  "  out  of  the  fulness  of 
the  heart:  but  those  who  have  heard  him  in 
the  little,  informal,  offhand  talks  he  gives 
among  his  own  people  in  his  own  bailiwick 
appreciate  them  even  more  than  what  he  has 
to  say  to  a  congregation  of  strangers  in  a 
great  city  far  from  the  Labrador. 

It  must  be  understood  that  the  quotations 
that  follow  are  merely  extemporaneous,  un- 
revised  sentences  taken  down  without  the  Doc- 
tor's knowledge,  and  of  a  nature  wholly  casual 
and  unpremeditated. 

At  a  service  held  in  the  tiny  saloon  of  the 
Strathcona  for  the  crew  and  the  patients  who 
happened  to  be  with  us,  the  Doctor  said : 

"  We  so  often  think  that  religion  is  bound 
to  be  dull  and  solemn  and  monotonous:  we 
don't  follow  the  example  of  Christ  who  spread 
119 


120  GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

light  and  joy  wherever  he  went.  None  of  us 
is  perfect,  but  God  doesn't  denounce  Dr.  Gren- 
fell  and  Will  Sims  and  Albert  Ash  (naming 
members  of  the  crew)  for  their  shortcomings. 
That  isn't  his  way.  He  knows  us  as  we  are, 
with  all  our  weaknesses.  He  loved  David — he 
said  that  David  was  a  man  after  his  own 
heart.  Yet  David  was  a  bad  man — he  was  an 
adulterer  and  incidentally  a  murderer,  and  he 
got  his  people  into  trouble  that  lost  thousands 
of  their  lives.  But  God  loved  him  in  spite 
of  his  human  frailties,  because  he  did  such  a 
lot  of  good  in  the  world. 

"  It  doesn't  do  to  take  a  single  text.  For 
instance — we  read  *  The  world  is  established 
so  that  it  cannot  be  moved,'  but  we  know  that 
it  is  all  movement :  we  know  that  it  moves  at 
a  pace  six  times  as  fast  as  the  fastest  aero- 
plane. But  the  Church  looked  at  that  verse 
and  said  that  he  who  denied  it  was  denying 
the  truth.  I  was  reading  this  morning  about 
Copernicus,  who  insisted  that  this  world  is 
round.  Up  to  his  time  men  had  insisted  that 
it  was  flat  and  that  you  might  fall  off  the 
edge.  Then  there  was  Galileo,  who  said  that 
it  moved :  and  they  put  him  under  the  thumb- 
screws, and  when  he  came  out  he  said,  *  and 
still  it  does  move.' 


DR.  GRENFELL  LEADING  MEETING  AT  BATTLE 
HARBOUR. 


THE  MAN  OF  GOD  121 

"  So  often  Christian  people  think  it's  their 
duty  to  forbid  and  to  repress  and  to  bring 
gloom  with  a  long  face  where  they  go.  But 
that  wasn't  Christ's  way  and  it  isn't  God's 
way.  If  religious  people  do  these  things  peo- 
ple begin  to  suppose  that  religion  is  something 
to  destroy  the  joy  of  living.  But  that  isn't 
what  it's  for.  It's  to  make  us  kinder  to 
fathers  and  mothers  and  sisters  and  friends, 
and  true  to  the  duty  nearest  our  hand. 

"  I  love  to  think  of  David  as  the  master 
musician  who  went  about  scattering  good  and 
dispelling  the  clouds  of  heaviness.  We  ought 
to  follow  his  example.  Sometimes  we  say 
*  Oh,  they've  all  been  so  mean  to  me  I'll  take 
it  out  on  them  by  being  sour  and  dull  and 
jealous  and  bitter ! '  Here  in  this  crew  we 
get  to  know  one  another  almost  as  well  as 
God  knows  us,  and  we  see  one  another's 
faults.  It's  so  easy  to  spy  out  faults  when 
we're  so  close  together,  day  after  day.  But 
we  should  be  blind  to  some  things — like  Nel- 
son at  Copenhagen.  You  remember  when 
they  gave  the  signal  to  retreat  he  put  his  blind 
eye  to  the  telescope. 

"  If  God  looked  for  the  faults  in  us,  who 
could  stand  before  Him?  None  of  us  is  per- 
fect.   Let  us  judge  not  that  we  be  not  judged, 


122  GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

and  mercifully  learn  to  make  allowances.  I 
knew  a  man  who  had  been  the  cause  of  a 
loss  of  $20,000  to  his  employer,  through 
costly  litigation  that  was  the  result  of  his 
mistakes.  His  master,  nevertheless,  gave  him 
a  second  chance,  with  an  even  better  job. 
Later  I  asked  him  if  the  man  was  making 
good.  He  replied,  *  He  is  the  best  servant  I 
have.'  Even  so  we  ought  to  learn  to  be  long- 
suffering  with  others,  as  God  is  lenient  until 
seventy  times  seven  with  us." 

In  the  little  church  at  Flower's  Cove  the 
Doctor  spoke  on  the  meaning  of  the  words  of 
Christ  in  Mark  8,  34,  as  given  in  the  vernac- 
ular version :  "  H  any  man  wishes  to  walk  in 
my  steps,  let  him  renounce  self,  take  up  his 
cross,  and  follow  me." 

"  What  is  there  that  a  man  values  more 
than  his  life? 

"  When  I  was  here  early  in  the  spring  there 
was  a  man  who  was  in  a  serious  way.  I  told 
him  he  should  come  to  the  hospital  at  St.  An- 
thony for  an  operation.  He  said  he  must  get 
his  traps  and  his  twine  ready.  Then  when  I 
came  again  in  June  I  saw  that  he  was  worse, 
and  I  again  gave  him  warning  that  in  six 
months  at  most  the  results  might  be  fatal. 
Still  he  said  that  he  could  not  go.     When  I 


THE  MAN  OF  GOD  123 

came  ashore  today  I  learned  that  he  was  dead. 
The  twine  was  ready — but  he  was  gone.  That 
is  the  way  with  so  many  of  us.  We  say  we 
are  too  busy — we  can  always  give  that  ex- 
cuse— and  then  death  finds  us,  grasping  our 
material  possessions,  perhaps,  but  with  the 
great  ends  of  life  unwon.  Its  only  a  stage  that 
we  cross  for  a  brief  transit,  coming  in  at  this 
door  and  going  out  at  that.  It  won't  do  to 
play  our  part  just  as  we  are  making  our 
exit — we  must  play  it  while  we  are  in  the 
middle  of  the  stage. 

"  At  Sandwich  Bay  we  followed  a  stream  and 
the  two  men  on  the  other  side  called  my  at- 
tention to  the  tracks  of  a  bear:  and  when  we 
came  back  to  the  boat  the  men  aboard  said 
they  had  seen  two  bears  wandering  about.  The 
bears  were  unable  to  hide  their  tracks,  and  even 
so  you  and  I  cannot  conceal  the  traces  of 
our  footsteps  where  we  went.  Captain  Cote 
at  the  Greenly  Island  Light  showed  us  the 
model  of  a  steamship — made  with  a  motor 
costing  a  dollar  and  a  half  that  ran  it  in  a 
straight  line  for  an  hour.  It  had  no  voli- 
tion of  its  own.  Man  is  not  like  that  soulless 
boat:  he  has  a  mind  of  his  own.  We  are 
surrounded  by  amazing  discoveries :  great 
scientists  are  ever  toiling  on  the  problem  of 


124  GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

communication  with  the  dead.  Men  laughed 
at  the  alchemists  of  old :  we  laugh  no  longer 
at  the  idea  of  changing  one  substance  into 
another.  We  can  change  water  with  electricity 
and  change  one  frog's  egg  into  twins.  We 
can  fly  from  St.  John's  to  England  in  a  day. 
We  can  see  through  solid  substances — come  to 
SL  Anthony  and  I  will  show  it  to  you  with 
the  X-ray  apparatus.  What  fools  we  are  to 
deny  immortality  and  the  resurrection !  What 
are  realized  values  as  compared  with  the 
spiritual?  There  was  the  ship  Royal  Charter 
for  Australia  that  went  ashore  at  Moidra  in 
Wales.  A  sailor  wrapped  himself  in  gold  and 
it  drowned  him.  Would  you  say  that  he  had 
the  gold  or  that  the  gold  had  him  ? 

"  The  carol  of  good  King  Wenceslaus  tells 
us  of  the  blessings  that  came  to  the  little  lad 
who  followed  in  the  footsteps  of  the  king.. 
Even  so,  better  things  than  any  temporal  bene- 
fits come  to  us  if  we  walk  in  the  steps  of 
Christ. 

"  Some  of  the  soldiers  of  the  war  returning 
to  this  country  are  not  acting  as  soldiers 
should.  They  are  importing  foreign  vices.  I 
have  seen  lately  horrible  examples  of  the  suf- 
fering of  the  innocents  as  a  result  of  their  mis- 
deeds.   There  are  more  communicable  diseases 


THE  MAN  OF  GOD  125 

in  the  present  year  than  we  have  ever  had  be- 
fore on  this  coast.  A  man  has  no  right  to  the 
title  of  a  soldier  who  does  not  walk  in  Christ's 
steps — he  has  no  right  to  the  name,  when  he 
pleases  self  and  damns  his  country  and  his 
fellow-men  and  fellow-women. 

"  We  have  among  us  the  deplorable  spectacle 
of  many  weak  sectarian  schools — and  it  is 
a  wicked  thing  that  we  do  not  combine  them 
in  strong  undenominational  ones.  So  many 
things  cry  out  for  changing.  Today  I  visited 
a  family  and  found  the  father  had  tubercu- 
losis. The  mother? — tuberculosis.  The  chil- 
dren?— tuberculosis.  Then  I  saw  a  baby 
whose  head  was  not  filled  up,  whose  arms  were 
puny,  whose  shoulders  were  constricted. 
From  what  ?  From  rickets.  The  rickets  came 
from  bad  feeding  due  to  ignorance.  I  saw 
another  child  with  the  same  complaint  from 
the  same  cause. 

"American  bank-notes  are  made  of  paper 
that  comes  from  Dalton,  Massachusetts.  The 
finest  quality  of  paper  is  made  of  rags.  They 
can  use  old  rags  and  dirty  rags — but  they  can- 
not use  red  ones.  In  explaining  the  manu- 
facture to  children  I  heard  the  manager  speak 
of  the  rags  as  being  '  willing  '  or  *  unwilling.' 
The  red  ones  were  the  '  unwilling '  ones,  and 


126  GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

one  of  the  children  afterward  said  she'd  rather 
be  a  willing  rag.  We  may  be  poor  and  sorry 
objects — we  may  be  rags — but  there  is  some- 
thing to  be  made  of  us  if  only  we  are  willing 
rags. 

"  I  came  to  a  paralyzed  boy.  He  said, 
*  What  can  I  do,  Dr.  Grenfell  ? '  I  said,  *  You 
can  smile  upon  all  those  who  minister  to  you 
or  come  where  you  are.  You  can  spread  the 
spirit  of  good  cheer  even  from  your  bedside.* 

"  I  was  present  at  Pilley's  Island  when  a 
soldier  came  home  who  had  won  the  V.  C. 
What  a  welcome  he  received!  There  was  a 
triumphal  arch  and  the  town  turned  out  to  do 
honour  to  its  hero.  He  was  the  right  sort  of 
soldier." 

Norman  Duncan  wrote  a  delightful  book 
called  "  Doctor  Luke  of  the  Labrador  "  which 
very  faithfully  mirrors  the  atmosphere  of  Dr. 
Grenfell's  days  and  doings.  But  the  book  is 
not  to  be  taken  as  faithful  biography  verbatim 
et  literatim,  in  the  passages  relating  to  the 
titular  hero. 

The  Doctor  has  nothing  in  the  open  book 
of  his  past  life  for  which  he  needs  to  make 
amends;  but  the  hero  of  "  Doctor  Luke"  has 
something  mysterious  to  live  down,  the  precise 
nature  of  which  is  not  divulged.    In  many  ad- 


THE  MAN  OF  GOD  127 

mirable  qualities  the  portrait  of  "  Doctor 
Luke "  is  a  faithful  likeness  of  Dr.  Gren- 
fell,  and  that  is  why  there  is  a  danger  that 
the  reader  will  think  that  in  all  particulars  the 
book  man  and  the  real  man  correspond.  "  Doc- 
tor Luke  "  goes  to  the  Labrador  to  flee  from 
his  own  shadow — a  man  pursued  by  bitter 
memories  of  what  he  has  done,  and  by  mock- 
ing wraiths  of  sin,  their  fingers  pointed  at 
him.  Dr.  Grenfell  went  to  the  Labrador  be- 
cause the  spirit  moved  him  to  go  to  the  help 
of  men  whose  lives  were  as  cold  as  the  ice 
land  as  hard  as  the  rock  that  hemmed  them  in. 
He  went  not  as  one  who  sorrows  over 
misspent  years  but  as  one  who  rejoices  in  the 
belief  that  his  work  has  the  smile  of  God 
upon  it.  Dr.  Grenfell  has  the  spirit  of  any 
first-rate  missionary — he  will  not  admit  that 
he  has  elected  a  life  of  brain-fag,  bodily  tra- 
vail and  spiritual  torment.  His  joy  in  doing 
and  giving  is  unaffected.  When  he  invites 
the  rest  of  us  to  find  life  beautiful  and  bounti- 
ful he  does  not  pose  nor  prate.  He  walks  in 
the  steps  and  in  the  name  of  Christ  with  a 
child's  humility,  a  man's  strength,  an  almost 
feminine  tenderness  and  never  a  breath  of  that 
maudlin,  unctuous  sanctimoniousness  which 
always  must  repel  the  virile  and  vertebrate 


128  GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

fibre  of  the  Thomas  Hughes  brand  of  "  mus- 
cular Christianity."  Dr.  Grenfell  likes  gospel 
hymns  where  some  prefer  sonatas  and  con- 
certos, but  he  likes  them  when  they  carry  a 
plain  and  pointed  message  from  the  heart  to 
the  heart,  and  build  up  a  consciousness  of  our 
human  interdependence:  he  would  not  care 
for  them  if  they  merely  blew  into  flame  the 
emotional  fire-in-straw  that  bums  itself  out 
uselessly  because  of  the  want  of  substantial 
fuel. 

To  the  humble  millionaire  or  the  haughty 
workingman  his  manner  is  the  same.  He 
knows  what  it  means  "  to  walk  with  kings  nor 
lose  the  common  touch."  Nor  is  he  easily 
fooled.  "  Though  I  give  my  body  to  be 
burned,  and  have  not  charity,  it  profiteth  me 
nothing." 

"I  talked  with  Mr.  A.,"  he  told  me,  re- 
ferring to  his  visit  with  a  Croesus  of  New 
York  who  to  certain  ends  has  given  largely, 
"  and  I  felt  somehow  that,  with  all  his  giving, 
he  had  not  given  himself! " 

That  is  the  secret,  it  seems  to  me,  of  Dr. 
Grenfell's  own  cogent  power  upon  other 
lives — that  he  goes  and  does  in  his  own  ener- 
getic j)erson.  He  does  not  stand  at  a  distance 
issuing  commands.     He  is  entirely  willing  to 


THE  MAN  OF  GOD  129 

help  anybody,  anywhere.  He  holds  back 
nothing  that  he  can  bestow,  and  he  never 
despairs.  His  ruddy  optimism  is  a  matter  of 
actual  daily  practice  and  not  of  a  cloistered 
philosophy.  You  never  could  persuade  him 
that  with  all  the  heavy  burden  that  he  bears, 
the  myriad  interruptions  and  vexations  that 
occur,  he  is  not  having  a  grand  good  time.  He 
would  be  entirely  ready  to  say  with  Steven- 
son: 

"  Glad  did  I  live  and  gladly  die  . 

And  I  laid  me  down  with  a  willj" 


X 

SOME  OF  HIS  HELPERS 

I  SHOULD  like  to  write  a  whole  book 
about  his  helpers.  He  is  not  a  man  who 
seeks  to  shine  by  surrounding  himself 
with  mediocrities.  He  would  be  ready  to  say 
with  Charles  M.  Schwab :  "I  want  you  to 
work  not  for  me  but  with  me."  His  presence 
is  quickening  and  engenders  loyalty.  It  is  fun 
to  be  wherever  Dr.  Grenfell  is  because  some- 
thing is  always  going  on. 

His  helpers  never  are  given  to  feel  that  they 
are  ciphers  while  he  is  the  integer.  Some  of 
the  ablest  surgeons  of  America  and  of  Europe 
have  ministered  to  the  patients  at  Battle  Har- 
bour, Indian  Harbour  and  St.  Anthony  and 
on  the  Strathcona.  There  is  an  utter  absence 
of  "  side "  and  "  swank "  in  this  the  good 
physician,  and  he  never  decks  himself  out  in 
the  borrowed  plumage  of  another's  virtue. 
He  delights  to  see  a  thing  well  done,  and  is 
the  first  to  bestow  the  word  of  earned  praise 
on  the  doer.  Conversely,  he  is  not  happy  it  a 
130 


SOME  OF  HIS  HELPERS         131 

job  is  put  through  in  a  bungling,  half-hearted, 
messy  fashion;  but  he  keeps  his  breath  to  cool 
his  porridge,  and  never  wastes  it  by  mere 
"  blowing  off  "  when  the  mischief  is  done  and 
palaver  will  not  mend  matters. 

Human  beings  are  not  angels,  and  even 
those  who  are  upheld  by  a  sense  of  righteous 
endeavour  may  get  tired  and  short-tempered 
and  disheartened  and  lonely.  Those  who  at- 
tach themselves  to  this  enterprise  for  the  weeks 
of  summer  sunlight  only  do  not  have  much 
time  to  develop  nostalgia.  But  "  there  ain't 
no  busses  runnin'  from  the  bank  to  Manda- 
lay,"  and  the  Labrador  has  no  theatres,  no 
picnics,  no  ball  games  and  few  dances.  Think 
of  the  large-hearted  Moravian  Brethren  of 
the  Labrador  whose  missions  are  linked  with 
London  by  one  visit  a  year  from  their  mission 
ship  the  Harmony.  Think  of  the  man  (Mr. 
Stewart)  who  sticks  it  out  by  himself  at 
Ungava  round  the  chill  promontory  of  Cape 
Chidley  in  Ungava  Bay.  Think  of  the  agents 
of  the  Hudson  Bay  and  other  companies  deal- 
ing with  the  "  silent,  smoky  Indian "  in  the 
vast  reaches  of  the  North.  Whoever  essays  to 
serve  God  and  man  in  this  country  must  haul 
his  own  weight  and  bear  others'  burdens  too. 
He  must  lay  aside  hindrances — he  must  for- 


132  GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

feit  love  of  home  and  kindred — he  must  learn 
to  keep  normal  and  cheerful  in  the  aching 
solitudes. 

Many  are  with  the  Doctor  for  a  season  or 
so.  Some  like  Dr.  Little,  Dr.  Paddon  and  Dr. 
Andrews  and  certain  others  who  deserve  to 
be  named  honoris  causa — have  stood  by  him 
year  after  year.  But  by  this  time  there  is  a 
small  army  of  short-term  or  long-term  Gren- 
fell  graduates — men  and  women — who  had 
"  their  souls  in  the  work  of  their  hands  "  and 
whose  precious  memories  are  of  the  days  they 
spent  in  assuaging  the  torment,  physical  or 
spiritual,  of  plain  fisher-folk.  It  is  not  possi- 
ble to  separate  in  this  case  the  care  of  bodies 
from  the  cure  of  souls.  The  "  wops  "  who 
brought  the  schooner  George  B.  Cluett  from 
Boston  year  after  year,  laden  with  lumber  and 
supplies,  and  then  went  ashore  to  be  plumbers 
and  carpenters  and  jacks-of -all -trades  for  love 
and  not  for  hire  have  their  own  stories  to 
tell  of  "  simple  service  simply  given  to  their 
own  kind  in  their  human  need."  Most  of 
them  knew  just  what  they  would  be  up  against ; 
they  knew  it  would  not  be  a  glorified  house- 
party;  but  they  accepted  the  isolation  and  the 
crudeness  and  the  cold  and  the  unremitting 
toil,  and  in  the  spirit  of  good  sportsmanship 


SOME  OF  HIS  HELPERS  133 

which  is  the  ruling  spirit  of  the  Grenfell  un- 
dertaking they  played  the  game,  and  what  they 
did  is  graven  deep  in  the  Doctor's  grateful 
memory. 

The  Doctor  wins  and  keeps  the  enthusiastic 
loyalty  of  his  colleagues  because  he  is  so  ready 
with  the  word  of  emphatic  praise  for  what 
they  do  when  it  is  the  right  thing  to  do.  He 
is  fearless  to  condemn,  but  he  would  rather 
commend,  and  the  flush  of  pleasure  in  the 
face  of  the  one  praised  tells  how  much  his 
approval  has  meant  to  the  recipient.  He 
knows  how  many  persons  in  this  human, 
fallible  world  of  ours  travel  faster  for  a  pat 
than  for  a  kick  or  a  blow. 

A  halt  was  called  at  Forteau  for  a  few 
hours'  conference  with  one  of  the  remarkable 
women  who  have  put  their  shoulders  under 
the  load  of  the  Labrador — Sister  Bailey,  once 
a  co-worker  with  Edith  Cavell.  At  Forteau 
she  has  a  house  that  holds  an  immaculate 
hospital-ward  and  an  up-to-date  dispensary. 
For  twelve  years — except  for  two  visits  in 
England — she  has  held  the  fort  here  without 
the  company  of  her  peers,  except  at  long  in- 
tervals. She  has  kept  herself  surrounded  with 
books  and  flowers,  and  her  geraniums  are  ex- 
quisite.    Sister  Bailey's  cow,  bought  for  $40 


134  GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

in  a  bargain  at  Bonne  Esperance  ("  Bony,") 
is  a  wonder,  and  I  took  pains  to  stroke  the 
nose  of  this  "  friendly  cow  "  and  praise  her 
Hfe-giving  endeavours.  For  each  day  at  the 
crack  of  dawn  there  is  a  line-up  of  people  with 
all  sorts  of  containers  to  get  the  milk.  The 
dogs,  of  course,  would  cheerfully  kill  the 
animal  if  they  could  pull  her  down,  but  she 
fights  them  off  with  her  horns,  and  they  have 
learned  a  wholesome  fear.  She  is  not  like  the 
cow  at  Bonne  Esperance  today,  which  has  suf- 
fered the  loss  of  part  of  its  hind  quarters  be- 
cause it  was  too  gentle. 

Under  Sister  Bailey's  roof  three  maids,  aged 
12,  13  and  22,  are  being  educated  in  household 
management.  She  has  a  garden  with  the  dogs 
fenced  out,  and  there  is  a  skirmish  with  the 
weeds  all  through  the  summer  into  which  win- 
ter breaks  so  suddenly.  There  is  no  spring; 
there  is  no  fall;  flowers,  vegetables  and  weeds 
appear  almost  explosively  together. 

Artificial  flowers  are  beautifully  made — 
with  dyes  from  Paris — by  the  girls  of  Forteau 
Cove,  under  Sister  Bailey's  supervision.  The 
hues  are  remarkably  close  to  the  original  and 
the  imitation  of  petal  and  leaf  is  so  close  as 
to  be  startling. 

No  description  of  Dr.  Grenfell's  "  parish," 


! 

r*  w'^^^'-'^*^'"^"'    ■  ■||.flafltlil:i 

m 

igr^aB^E^'^^        ■~'  ^^  —  1 

■      !                  V 

ST.   ANTHONY   HOSPITAL  IN   WINTER. 


SOME  OF  THE  HELPERS. 


SOME  OF  HIS  HELPERS  135 

as  Norman  Duncan  aptly  styled  it,  could  be 
complete  without  mention — that  would  be 
much  more  extended  did  she  permit — of  the 
part  Mrs.  Grenfell  fills  in  all  that  the  Doctor 
does.  Mrs.  Grenfell  was  Miss  Anna  Mac- 
Qanahan,  of  Chicago,  and  she  is  a  graduate 
of  Bryn  Mawr.  T!he  Doctor  went  to  the 
Labrador  years  before  his  marriage,  but  since 
she  took  her  place  at  his  side  with  her  tact,  her 
humour,  her  common  sense,  her  sound  judg- 
ment and  her  broad  sympathies,  she  has  been 
a  tower  of  strength,  a  well-spring  of  solace 
and  of  healing,  and  altogether  an  indispensa- 
ble factor  in  her  husband's  enterprise. 

She  is  his  secretary,  and  the  number  of  let- 
ters to  be  written,  of  patients'  records  to  be 
kept,  of  manuscripts  to  be  prepared  for  the 
press  is  enormous.  The  Doctor  pencils  a 
memorandum  when  and  where  he  can — per- 
haps sitting  atop  of  a  woodpile  on  the  reeling 
deck  of  the  Strathcona;  and  then  Mrs.  Gren- 
fell tames  the  rebellious  punctuation  or  sup- 
plies the  missing  links  of  predicates  or  preposi- 
tions and  evolves  a  manuscript  that  need  not 
fear  to  face  the  printer. 

The  letters  of  appeal  are  almost  innumer- 
able, of  protest  occasional,  of  sympathy  and 
friendship — with   or  without   subscriptions — 


136  GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

very  numerous,  and  Mrs.  Grenfell  has  the 
happy  gift  of  saying  "  thank  you  "  in  such 
warm  and  gracious,  individualizing  terms  that 
the  donor  is  enlisted  in  a  lifelong  friendship 
for  the  Grenfell  idea. 

Mrs.  Grenfell  is  "the  life  of  the  party" 
wherever  she  goes.  Like  the  Doctor,  she  re- 
fuses to  grow  tired  of  the  great  game  of  liv- 
ing, and  it  is  a  game  they  play  together  in  a 
completely  understanding  and  sympathetic 
copartnership. 

General  "  Chinese "  Gordon  once  gave  as 
the  reason  for  not  marrying  the  fact  that  he 
had  never  found  the  woman  who  would  fol- 
low him  anywhere.  Dr.  Grenfell  has  been 
more  fortunate.  A  friend  of  theirs  tells  me 
that  Dr.  Grenfell  proposed  on  shipboard,  al- 
most the  minute  he  met  his  wife.  Astounded 
by  his  precipitancy,  she  said :  "  But,  Doctor, 
you  don't  even  know  my  name ! "  "  That 
doesn't  make  any  difference ;  I  know  what  it's 
going  to  be,"  is  said  to  have  been  his  charac- 
teristic answer. 

Mrs.  Grenfell  was  translated  from  a  life 
that  might  have  been  one  of  ease  and  pleasure 
and  social  preoccupation  into  a  life  of  unre- 
mitting toil  and  no  small  measure  of  actual 
hardship,  and  she  meets  the  day  and  whatever 


SOME  OF  HIS  HELPERS  137 

it  brings  in  the  same  high-hearted  mood  that 
her  husband  carries  to  the  various  phases  of 
his  crowded  existence.  She  is  his  mentor — 
without  being  a  tormentor;  she  is  his  business 
memory  and  a  deal  of  his  common  sense  and 
social  conscience:  but  she  never  lets  her  fine, 
keen  mind,  her  quick  wit  and  her  readily  di- 
vining intuition  become  absorbed  in  the  me- 
chanic phases  of  the  regulation  of  household 
or  boatload  business.  She  has  the  happy 
faculty  of  instant  transplantation  from  the 
practical  task  to  the  ideal  atmosphere.  She 
is  the  Doctor's  workmate,  playmate  and  help- 
mate: the  complete  and  inspiring  counterpart. 
She  knows  better  than  anybody  else  that  she 
has  a  great  man  for  a  husband,  but  she  never 
lets  that  consciousness  become  oppressive,  and 
she  knows  that  it  is  good  for  them  both  to 
yield  to  the  playful  spirit  of  rollicking  non- 
sense and  absurd  horseplay  now  and  then.  So 
you  needn't  be  surprised  if  you  should  find  the 
pair  chasing  each  other  about  the  deck  pre- 
tending a  mortal  combat  with  billets  of  birch- 
wood,  while  the  distracted  Fritz  the  dog  can- 
not make  up  his  mind  whether  he  is  in  duty 
bound  to  bite  his  mistress  or  his  master.  You 
needn't  be  surprised  if  the  Doctor  goes  through 
a  mighty  pantomime  of  barricading  his  chart- 


188  GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

room  as  though  his  better  half  had  no  business 
in  it,  or  hides  some  one  of  her  cherished  Lares 
and  Penates  and  assumes  an  innocent  ignorance 
of  its  whereabouts.  When  he  is  at  play  Dr. 
Grenfell  is  not  a  bit  older  than  the  youngest 
of  his  three  delightful  children  whose  com- 
bined ages  cannot  be  much  more  than  fifteen 
years.  He  is  the  same  sort  of  amusing  and 
devoted  father  as  the  mourned  and  beloved 
head  of  the  household  at  Sagamore  Hill,  who 
to  Dr.  Grenfell — of  course — is  the  pattern  of 
all  that  the  head  of  a  family  and  the  soul  of 
a  nation  should  be. 

The  family  life  of  the  Grenfells  and  the 
perfect  mutuality  of  thought  and  feeling  be- 
tween Dr.  Grenfell  and  his  wife  stand  out  in 
clear-cut  lines  as  an  example  to  those  who 
never  have  known  the  meaning  of  the  com- 
plete community  of  ideals  in  the  family  life 
and  in  the  relationship  of  wife  and  husband. 
It  stands  in  rebuke  to  the  sorrowful  travesty 
the  modern  marriage  so  often  exhibits.  It 
shows  how  the  strength  of  either  partner  in  the 
marriage  of  true  minds  is  multiplied  tenfold 
and  how  the  yoke  is  easy  and  the  burden  is 
light  when  love  has  entered  in — 

"  The  love  you  long  to  give  to  one 
Made  great  enough  to  hold  the  world." 


XI 


FOUR-FOOTED  AIDES:   DOGS   AND 
REINDEER 

IN  few  places  are  the  dogs  so  numerous  and 
so  noisy  as  at  Forteau,  and  Sister  Bailey's 
team  held  the  primacy  for  speed  and  con- 
dition and  obedience  to  command — yet  she 
ruled  them  by  moral  suasion  and  not  by  kicks 
and  curses.  That  does  not  mean  they  were  dog 
angels.  Every  "  husky "  is  in  part  a  wolf, 
and  the  gentlest  and  most  amiable  that  fawns 
upon  you  will  in  a  twinkling  go  from  the  Dr. 
Jekyll  to  the  Mr.  Hyde  in  his  make-up  when 
the  breaking-point  is  passed.  The  leaders  of 
the  pack  were  two  monsters  named  Scotty 
and  Carlo,  and  they  were  rivals  to  the  end  of 
the  tether.  Carlo  was  a  sentimentalist  of  a 
hue  between  fawn  and  grey:  his  greatest 
pleasaunce  was  to  put  his  forepaws  on  your 
shoulders  and  lick  your  nose  ere  you  could 
stave  him  off.  Scotty's  nose — he  was  black 
and  white — was  embossed  with  the  marks  of 
many  bitter  duels.  Probably  the  other  dogs 
139 


140  GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

could  read  those  marks,  as  a  Bret  Harte  cow- 
boy could  read  the  notches  on  a  gun,  and  he 
won  respect  commensurate  with  the  length  and 
breadth  of  the  scratches.  Scotty  came  with  us 
on  the  Strathcona,  as  his  mistress  was  leaving 
for  a  rest  in  England  shortly.  It  was  a  job 
to  persuade  him  aboard  the  boat,  but  once 
there  he  entered  into  a  tacit  agreement,  as  be- 
tween gentlemen,  that  he  should  have  the  after 
deck  while  Fritz,  our  official  dog,  monopolized 
the  prow.  Scotty  had  the  better  of  the  bar^ 
gain,  for  his  bailiwick  included  the  cook's 
galley.  But  Fritz  could  sleep  on  the  floor  of 
my  cabin,  though  whenever  I  looked  for  him 
on  the  floor  he  was  snugly  ensconced  in  a  for- 
bidden lower  bunk,  curled  up  like  a  jelly  roll. 
He  learned  to  vacate  without  even  a  word 
when  I  gazed  at  him  reproachfully. 

All  Sister  Bailey's  dogs,  and  a  great  many 
more,  converged  upon  the  beach  when  Fritz 
swam  ashore  and  shook  himself  free  from 
such  marine  algae  as  he  might  have  collected  on 
his  course.  We  kept  Fritz  close  at  heel,  but 
there  were  constant  alarums  and  incursions. 
As  we  sauntered  along  the  shore  path  by  the 
fish-flakes  where  the  women  were  turning  over 
the  fish  under  the  threat  of  rain,  Fritz  was  in 
a   measure   taken    into    the   loosely   cohesive 


FOUR-FOOTED  AIDES  141 

plunderbund  of  Sister  Bailey's  pack.  They 
seemed  to  be  saying  to  him  after  their  fashion : 
"  Oh,  well,  you  are  a  foreigner  from  that  ship 
out  yonder  in  the  cove,  to  be  sure,  but  here 
we  are  passing  one  hostile  tribe  after  another, 
and  we  may  need  you  any  time  to  help  us  out 
in  a  scrap,  so  you  may  as  well  travel  along 
with  our  bushy  tails — though  yours  points 
toward  the  ground,  and  you  can't  be  very  much 
of  a  dog,  after  all." 

For  dogs  appeared  in  squads,  platoons,  com- 
panies, battalions,  even  as  iron-filings  cluster 
to  a  magnet.  There  was  a  most  outrageous 
and  unholy  pow-wow  when  we  had  gone  about 
five  houses  from  the  beach.  All  the  dogs  from 
near  and  far  piled  into  it  like  hornets  from 
a  broken  nest.  There  was  no  speech  nor 
language  known  to  dogdom  in  which  their 
voices  were  not  heard  with  howls  and  impreca- 
tions. Alas !  even  the  gentle  Sister  Bailey  had 
to  abandon  for  the  nonce  her  policy  of  moral 
suasion  and  get  in  among  her  proteges  with 
thwackings  of  a  bit  of  driftwood  and  a  few 
well-(firected  pushes  (not  to  say  kicks)  of  the 
foot.  Any  moderate  impact,  when  a  scrap  is 
in  full  swing,  rebounds  from  the  tough  integu- 
ments like  hailstones  landing  on  a  tin  roof. 
Even  an  every-day  argument  of  these  beasts 


142  GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

sounds  like  wholesale  murder.  It  is  a  pathetic 
fact  that  with  all  the  affectionate  responsive- 
ness of  some  of  the  animals  to  human  notice 
there  always  lurks  a  danger.  If  you  are  a 
stranger,  meeting  a  strange  pack,  it  is  well  to 
keep  your  eyes  upon  them,  and  if  you  have  not 
a  stick  in  your  hand,  or  a  stone  ready  to  throw, 
it  is  wholesome  to  stoop  groundward  and  pre- 
tend you  have  a  missile.  Then,  nine  times 
out  of  ten,  they  will  scatter.  So  often  one 
would  like  to  believe  they  are  all  dog,  with 
all  of  the  dog's  graces  and  goodnesses — but 
there  reigns  in  the  breast  of  each  a  vulpine 
jealousy  that  easily  and  instantly  mounts  to 
a  blood-heat  of  maddened  fury.  Dogs  of  the 
same  litter  will  fight  as  furiously  and  savagely 
as  born  enemies,  though  they  may  recognize 
in  the  traces  intuitively  the  leadership  of  their 
mother  at  an  age  far  beyond  that  at  which 
civilized  puppies  become  as  contemptuous  of 
their  mother  as  she  is  of  them. 

Unhappily,  there  are  many  cases  on  authen- 
tic record  when  young  children  and  old  people, 
unable  to  defend  themselves,  have  been  de- 
voured by  dogs — not  necessarily  when  the  dogs 
were  starving.  A  grewsome  climax  was 
reached  when  in  the  "  flu "  epidemic  of 
19 18-19  on  the  Labrador  the  dogs  fell  on  the 


FOUR-FOOTED  AIDES  143 

dead  and  the  dying  and  the  enfeebled  survivors 
could  not  stem  the  onslaught.  No  wonder, 
then,  that  Dr.  Grenfell,  with  all  his  manifest 
affection  for  dogs  that  he  has  known,  insists 
that  the  importation  of  reindeer  is  the  salva- 
tion and  the  solution.  Stubbornly  the  folk 
of  the  northern  tip  of  the  peninsula  and  the 
Labrador  coast  cling  to  the  huskies  that  were 
banished,  in  favour  of  cows,  horses,  pigs  and 
chickens,  by  their  more  sophisticated  southern 
neighbours.  Uncle  Philip  Coates  at  Eddy's 
Cove  is  the  only  man  on  that  shore,  as  far  as 
is  known,  who  keeps  pigs. 

A  fisherman  landing  on  an  island  off  Cape 
Charles,  on  the  side  away  from  his  home, 
found  himself  the  object  of  the  unwelcome  at- 
tentions of  a  pack  of  dogs  who  were  acting  on 
the  principle  of  the  uncouth  villager  of  the  old 
story  who  cried :  "  'Ere's  a  stranger,  Bill — let's 
'eave  'arf  a  brick  at  him."  He  is  sure  they 
would  have  pounced  on  him  and  polished  off 
his  bones,  had  he  not  seen  one  dog  he  knew — 
the  leader.  He  called  the  dog's  name;  the 
wolfish  creature  halted  instantly.  When  the 
name  was  repeated,  the  dog  slunk  off,  his 
ragged  retinue  at  his  heels. 

It  is  sad  to  think  that  the  dogs  that  will  per- 
form so  nobly  in  the  traces  are  such  bad  actors 


144  GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

when  they  have  nothing  to  do  but  to  pick  a 
quarrel  in  places  where  perhaps  there  is  no 
foliage  but  the  proud  curled  plumage  of  their 
tails.  They  are  beside  themselves  with  excite- 
ment when  after  the  summer  siesta  they  are 
harnessed  to  the  komatik  again.  When  the 
driver  smartly  rubs  his  hands  and  cries,  "  See 
the  deer !  " — or  anything  he  pleases — it  aug- 
ments the  fever.  In  Labrador  "  ouk,  ouk!" 
turns  the  team  to  the  right — perchance  with 
a  disconcerting  promptness — and  "  urrah, 
urrah ! "  swerves  it  to  the  left.  The  corres- 
ponding directions  in  Newfoundland  are 
"keep  off!"  and  "hold  in."  No  reins  are 
used — some  drivers  use  no  whip.  The  books 
of  Dr.  Grenfell  abound  in  affectionate  refer- 
ence to  the  better  nature  of  these  animals  and 
their  extraordinary  fidelity  to  duty.  Like  ma&t 
of  the  people  of  the  land,  they  do  not  fear  to 
die.  Their  life  is  largely  of  neglect  and  pain: 
they  spend  much  of  their  time  crawling  under 
the  houses  to  get  out  of  the  way.  Their 
pleasure  is  the  greater  when  they  find  a  human 
playmate  ready  to  throw  a  stick  into  the  water 
for  them.  Grand  swimmers  are  they,  and  they 
will  plunge  into  the  coldest  sea;  and  if  they 
are  hungry  they  dive  in  for  a  small  fish  with- 
out concern.     It  is  hard  to  find  a  time  when 


FOUR-FOOTED  AIDES  145 

they  are  not  ready  to  set  their  fangs  to  food — 
"  full-fed  "  is  an  ideal  condition  to  which  most 
of  them  seldom  attain.  A  square  meal  of 
whalemeat  is  their  millennium.  "  I  don't  see 
what  satisfaction  they  get  out  of  it,"  said 
"  Bill "  Norwood — one  of  the  volunteer 
"  wops  "  building  the  Battle  Harbour  reser- 
voir. "  The  meat  in  winter  comes  to  them 
in  frozen  hunks,  and  they  slide  it  down  at  one 
gulp,  to  melt  in  their  stomach.  That's  not 
quite  my  idea  of  enjoying  a  meal." 

In  a  yawl  that  the  Strathcona  dragged 
astern  three  plaintive  huskies,  to  be  committed 
to  the  pack  at  St.  Anthony,  hungrily  sniffed 
the  meat-laden  breeze  that  blew  from  our 
deck.  They  were  perturbed  at  finding  them- 
selves going  to  sea.  I  may  add  that  when  they 
got  ashore  the  youngest  of  the  three — a  mere 
baby — jumped  on  a  rock  and  bit  the  nose  of 
the  leader  of  the  St.  Anthony  pack,  Eric  by 
name,  thereby  winning  respect  for  himself 
and  his  two  comrades  among  the  aborigines 
who  might  otherwise  have  fallen  upon  them 
and  rent  them  limb  from  limb. 

The  dogs  at  Battle  Harbeur  live  up  to  the 
name  of  the  settlement.  Like  all  other 
"  huskies,"  they  are  ready  to  fight  on  slight 
provocation,  and  the  night  is  made  vocal  with 


146  GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

their  long-drawn  ululations.  Their  appetite 
is  insatiable — they  devour  with  enthusiasm 
whatsoever  things  are  thrown  out  at  the 
kitchen  door — they  even  ate  a  towel  that  went 
astray — and  when  nothing  better  offers  they 
will  wade  into  the  water  in  quest  of  caplin,  or 
cods*  heads.  In  their  enthusiasm  for  food  the 
dogs  will  dig  through  boards  to  get  at  cattle 
and  pigs,  and  cows  and  chickens  seldom  live 
where  the  dogs  are  numerous. 

The  murderous  proclivities  of  the  dogs  of 
the  Labrador  furnished  one  of  the  chief  rea- 
sons, as  has  been  said  before,  why  the  Doctor 
went  to  such  great  pains  and  to  such  a  relatively 
large  expense  to  import  and  domicile  the  rein- 
deer. 

"  It  was  wildly  exciting  work,  I  can  tell  you, 
lassoing  those  reindeer  and  tying  their  legs  in 
that  country  over  yonder,"  he  said,  as  the 
Strathcona  rounded  the  rugged  bread-loaf 
island  of  Cape  Onion.  He  pointed  to  the  set- 
tlement of  Island  Bay  behind  it.  "  There  we 
were  blown  across  the  bay  on  the  ice — dogs, 
komatik  and  all — roaring  with  laughter  at 
our  own  predicament,  helpless  before  the  great 
gale  of  wind."  Thus  he  recalls  without  bit- 
terness the  costly  undertaking  whose  fruition 
has  been — and   still   is — one   of  his  dearest 


N 


FOUR-FOOTED  AIDES  147 

dreams.  Conveying  the  captured  reindeer 
across  the  Strait  in  a  schooner  to  Canada  with 
almost  nobody  to  help  him  was  a  Herculean 
task.  Some  day  the  Legislature  at  St.  John's 
may  see  fit  to  divert  a  little  money  to  estab- 
lishing the  docile  and  reliable  reindeer  in  place 
of  treacherous  and  predatory  dogs.  It  is  a 
greater  loss  to  the  island  than  to  Grenfell  that 
the  scheme  must  wait. 

With  a  mob  of  dogs  in  every  village,  a  mob 
actuated  most  of  the  time  by  an  insatiable 
hunger  driving  it  forth  in  quest  of  any  sort 
of  food,  it  has  been  impossible  in  most  places 
to  keep  a  cow  or  a  goat,  and  hay  is  prohibi- 
tively costly  to  import.  Dr.  Grenfell  has  de- 
scribed with  pathos  how  Labrador  mothers,  in 
default  even  of  canned  milk  for  the  baby,  are 
in  the  habit  of  chewing  hard  bread  into  a  pulpy 
mass  to  fill  the  infant's  mouth  and  thus  pro- 
duce the  illusion  of  nutriment  until  it  is  able 
to  masticate  and  assimilate  "  loaf  "  for  itself. 
In  few  countries  is  milk  so  scarce. 

The  reindeer  might  be  the  cow  of  the  Labra- 
dor. The  reindeer  is  able  to  find  a  square 
meal  amid  the  moss  and  lichens,  and  it  yields 
milk  so  rich  as  to  require  dilution  to  bring 
it  down  to  the  standard  of  cow's  milk,  while 
it  is  free  from  the  peculiar  flavour  of  the  milk 


148  GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

of  the  goat.  The  Lapps  make  the  milk  into 
a  "  cream  cheese "  which  Dr.  Grenfell  has 
tried  out  on  his  sledge  journeys  and  heartily 
endorses. 

Nearly  three  hundred  reindeer  were  ob- 
tained by  Dr.  Grenfell  in  Lapland  in  1907, 
with  three  Lapland  families  to  herd  them  and 
teach  herding.  They  were  landed  at  Cremail- 
liere,  (locally  called  "  Camelias"),  three  miles 
south  of  St.  Anthony.  At  the  end  of  four 
years  the  herd  numbered  a  thousand.  In  19 12, 
twelve  hundred  and  fifty  at  once  were  cor- 
raled.  Poaching  and  want  of  police  protection 
made  it  desirable  to  transfer  the  animals 
across  the  Straits  to  Canada.  Some  of  them, 
by  virtue  of  strenuous  effort,  were  collected 
in  19 18  and  transported  to  the  St.  Augustine 
River  district  where  now  they  flourish  and  in- 
crease in  number.  Some  day,  it  would  seem 
from  the  gjeat  success  of  the  reindeer-herds 
of  Alaska — introduced  by  Dr.  Sheldon  Jack- 
son and  fostered  by  the  United  States  Gov- 
ernment— ^these  fine  animals  will  surely  replace 
the  dogs  on  the  Labrador,  when  local  preju- 
dice against  them  has  been  overcome  or  has 
evaporated.  They  are  useful  not  merely  for 
the  milk  but  for  the  meat  and  the  skins,  as 
well  as  for  transportation.    They  live  at  peace 


FOUR-FOOTED  AIDES  149 

instead  of  on  the  precarious  verge  of  battle. 
The  "  experiment "  has  not  collapsed  in  dis- 
mal failure.  It  is  only  in  abeyance  to  the 
ultimate  assured  success,  and  it  is  not  too  much 
to  predict  that  another  generation  or  two  will 
see  the  reindeer  numerous  and  useful  through- 
out the  Labrador. 


XII 

A  WIDE,  WIDE  "PARISH" 

TO  take  the  measure  of  the  man  Dr. 
Grenfell  is  and  the  work  he  does  it  is 
necessary  to  know  something  of  the 
land  and  the  waters  round  about,  where  he 
puts  his  life  in  jeopardy  year  after  year,  day 
unto  day,  to  save  the  lives  of  others.  There 
is  much  more  to  "  Dr.  Grenfell's  parish  "  than 
the  "  rock,  fog  and  bog "  of  the  old  saying. 
Such  observations  as  are  here  assembled  are 
the  raw  material  for  the  Doctor's  inimitable 
tales  of  life  on  the  Labrador. 

The  great  fact  of  life  here  is  the  sea,  and 
much  of  existence  is  in  giving  battle  to  it. 
The  little  boys  practice  jumping  across  rain- 
barrels  and  mud-puddles,  because  some  day 
they  hope  to  get  a  "  ticket "  (a  berth  on  a 
sealer)  and  go  to  the  ice,  and  when  it  is  "a 
good  big  copy  from  pan  to  pan  " — ^that  is  to 
say,  a  considerable  distance  from  one  floating 
ice-cake  to  the  next — their  ability  to  jump  like 
their  own  island  sheep  may  save  their  lives. 
ISO 


SIGNAL  HILL,  HARBOUR  OF  ST.  JOHNS. 


A  WIDE,  WIDE  "  PARISH  "       151 

The  word  "  copy "  comes  from  the  childish 
game  of  following  the  leader  and  doing  as  he 
does.  A  little  piece  of  ice  is  called  a  knob,  and 
a  larger  piece  is  a  pan.  A  pan  is  the  same 
thing  as  a  floe,  but  the  latter  expression  is 
not  in  common  usage. 

Every  youth  who  aspires  to  qualify  as  a 
skipper  must  go  before  an  examining  board  of 
old  sea-wise  and  weather-wise  pilots,  and  prove 
himself  letter-perfect  in  the  text  of  that  big 
book,  "  The  Newfoundland  and  Labrador 
Pilot  and  Guide,"  His  examiners  scorn  the 
knowledge  of  the  book,  very  often,  for  they 
have  the  facts  at  the  fingers'  ends  from  long 
and  harsh  experience  of  the  treacherous 
waters,  with  the  criss-cross  currents,  the  hid- 
den reefs,  the  sudden  fogs,  the  contrary  winds. 
So  they  delight  to  make  life  miserable  for  the 
young  mariner  by  heckling  him. 

The  disasters  that  now  and  then  overtake 
the  sealing-fleet  are  ever  present  in  the  minds 
of  those  who  do  business  in  these  waters. 
They  know  what  it  means  for  a  ship's  com- 
pany to  be  caught  out  on  the  ice  in  a  snow- 
storm, far  from  the  vessel.  In  early  March 
the  wooden  ships  race  for  the  Straits  of  Belle 
Isle,  and  three  days  later  the  faster  iron  ships 
follow.    When  they  get  to  where  the  seals  are 


152  GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

sunning  themselves  around  the  blow-holes  in 
the  ice,  the  crew  go  out  with  their  gaffs 
(staves)  and  kill  the  usually  unresisting  ani- 
mals by  hitting  them  over  the  back  of  the  head. 
It  sounds  like  simple  and  easy  hunting,  and 
in  good  weather  it  is.  But  a  long-continued 
storm  changes  the  complexion  of  the  adventure 
to  that  of  the  gravest  peril. 

One  captain  saved  his  men  by  making  them 
dance  like  mad  the  long  night  through,  while 
he  crooned  the  music  to  them.  At  the  end  of 
each  five  minutes  he  let  them  rest  on  their 
piles  of  gaffs,  and  then  they  were  made  to 
spring  to  their  feet  again  and  resume  the  fran- 
tic gyrations  that  kept  them  from  freezing  to 
death.  In  the  same  storm,  the  Greenland  of 
Harbour  Grace  lost  52  of  her  100  men. 

They  still  talk  of  the  fate  of  the  Queen  on 
Gull  Island  off  Cape  St.  John,  though  the 
wreck  took  place  nigh  unto  forty  years  ago. 
There  was  no  lighthouse  then.  The  island  lifts 
its  head  hundreds  of  feet  above  the  mean  of 
the  tides,  and  only  the  long  rank  grass  and 
the  buttercups  live  there  in  summer.  But  this 
was  in  a  December  night,  and  the  wind  blew 
a  gale.  There  were  six  passengers — a  woman 
among  them.  When  the  passengers  had 
battled  their  way  ashore  through  the  leaping 


A  WIDE,  WIDE  "  PARISH  "       163 

surf,  the  crew  went  back  on  the  doomed  ship 
to  salvage  some  of  the  provisions.  For  they 
knew  that  at  this  forsaken  angle  of  the  island 
no  help  from  any  passing  ship  was  likely  till 
the  spring. 

The  passengers  toiled  to  the  top  of  the  bleak 
islet,  lugging  with  them  a  fragment  of  a  sail. 
The  crew,  aboard  the  vessel,  were  carried  by 
the  furious  winds  and  waters  out  to  the  Old 
Harry  Shoals,  where  they  lost  their  lives  when 
the  sea  beat  the  vessel  to  pieces. 

The  sequel  is  known  by  a  little  diary  in 
which  a  doctor — one  of  the  hapless  half- 
dozen — made  notes  with  his  own  blood  till 
his  stiffening  fingers  refused  to  scrawl  another 
entry. 

It  seems  from  this  pathetic  note-book  that 
the  six  at  the  end  of  a  few  days,  tortured  with 
thirst  and  starvation,  drew  lots  to  see  who 
should  die. 

The  lot  fell  to  the  woman.  Her  brother 
offered  himself  in  her  place. 

Then  the  entries  in  the  book  cease;  and  the 
curtain  that  fell  was  not  lifted  till  spring 
brought  a  solitary  hunter  to  the  island.  He 
shot  a  duck  from  his  boat,  and  it  fell  in  the 
breakers.  Afterwards  he  said  it  was  a  phan- 
tom fowl,  sent  from  heaven  to  guide  him.    For 


154  GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

he  did  not  see  it  again,  though  he  landed  and 
searched  the  beach. 

But  he  saw  sphnters  flung  high  by  the  surf 
that  seemed  to  him  a  clear  indication  of  a 
wreck. 

He  clambered  to  the  top  of  the  islet.  There 
he  found,  under  the  rotted  sail,  the  six  bodies, 
and  in  the  hand  of  one,  was  a  piece  of  flesh 
torn  from  one  of  the  bodies. 

Even  when  their  lives  are  endangered  the 
fishermen  preserve  their  keen  mindfulness  of 
the  religious  proprieties.  Caught  on  an  ice- 
pan  together,  Protestants  and  Catholics  prayed, 
their  backs  to  one  another,  on  opposite  sides 
of  the  pan — and  the  same  thing  has  happened 
in  ships'  cabins.  The  sailors  are  not  above  a 
round  oath  now  and  then,  but  there  are  many 
God-fearing,  prayerful  men  among  th«n. 
"  These  are  my  sailing  orders,  sir,"  said  an 
old  retired  sea-dog  to  me  as  he  patted  the  cheek 
of  his  Bible. 

Phrases  of  the  sea  enter  into  every  phase  of 
daily  human  intercourse.  "  You  should  have 
given  yourself  more  room  to  veer  and  haul," 
said  the  same  old  sailor  to  me  when  I  was  in 
a  hurry.  Fish  when  half -cured  are  said  to  be 
"  half-saved,"  and  a  man  who  is  "  not  all 
there  "  is  likely  to  be  styled  "  half-saved." 


A  WIDE,  WIDE  "  PARISH  "       155 

"  Down  killik  "  is  used  impartially  on  arrival 
at  the  fishing  grounds  or  at  home  after  a 
voyage — the  "  killik  "  being  a  stone  anchor  for 
small  craft  or  for  nets.  (A  "  killy-claw  "  is 
of  wood  with  the  stone  in  the  middle.)  You 
may  hear  an  old  fisherman  say  of  his  retire- 
ment from  the  long  warfare  with  the  sea  for 
a  living :  "  My  killiks  are  down ;  my  boat  ts 
moored."  One  of  them  who  was  blind  in  his 
left  eye,  said  as  he  lay  dying,  referring  to  his 
own  soul :  "  She's  on  her  last  tack,  heading  for 
I  don't  know  where :  the  port  light  is  out,  and 
the  starboard  is  getting  very  dim."  A  few 
minutes  later  he  passed  away. 

The  ordinary  talk  is  full  of  poetry.  "  If  I 
could  only  rig  up  a  derrick,  now,  to  hoist  me 
over  the  fore  part  of  the  winter,"  an  old  salt 
will  say,  "  wi'  the  help  o'  God  and  a  sou'- 
westerly  wind  and  a  few  swyles  I  could  last 
till  the  spring."  By  "  swyles,"  of  course,  he 
means  "  seals."  A  man's  a  man  when  he  has 
killed  his  seal.  Seal-meat  is  an  anti-scorbutic, 
and  the  sealers  present  the  "  paws,"  or  flippers, 
as  great  delicacies  to  their  friends.  A  "  big 
feed  "  is  a  "  scoff."  Sealing  brings  men  to- 
gether in  conviviality  and  comaraderie,  and  it 
is  the  great  ambition  of  most  of  the  youth  of 
Newfoundland   to   "go  to   the  ice."     Many 


166  GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

are  the  stowaways  aboard  the  sealing  craft. 
If  a  man  goes  "  half  his  hand  "  it  means  he 
gets  half  his  catch  for  his  labour. 

"  Seal "  is  pronounced  "  swyle,"  "  syle,"  or 
"  swoyle "  and  Swale  Island  also  takes  its 
name  from  this  most  important  mammal. 
Seals  wandering  in  search  of  their  blow-holes 
have  been  found  as  far  as  six  or  seven  miles 
inland. 

As  might  be  expected,  there  survives  in  the 
vernacular — especially  of  the  older  people — 
many  words  and  phrases  that  smack  of  their 
English  dialect  origin,  and  words  that  were 
the  English  undefiled  of  Chaucer's  or  Shake- 
speare's day.  Certain  proper  names  represent 
a  curious  conversion  of  a  French  name  no 
longer  understood. 

In  Dorsetshire  dialect  v  is  used  for  f,  and 
in  Newfoundland  one  hears  "  fir "  pro- 
nounced "  vir  "  or  "  var."  Firewood  is  "  vir- 
wood."  Women  who  are  "  vuzzing  up  their 
vires"  are  fussing  (making  ready)  their  fires. 
We  have  "  it  wouldn't  be  vitty  "  in  place  of 
"it  wouldn't  be  fitting."  A  pig  "veers";  it 
does  not  farrow.  The  use  of  "thiccy"  for 
"  this "  is  familiar  to  readers  of  "  Lorna 
Doone."  "  The  big  spuds  are  not  very  jonnick 
yet"  means  that  the  potatoes  are  not  well 


A  WIDE,  WIDE  "  PARISH  "       167 

done.  If  something  "  hatches "  in  your 
"  glutch,"  it  catches  in  your  throat.  Blizzard 
is  a  word  not  used,  and  a  lass  at  school,  con- 
fusing it  with  gizzard,  said  it  meant  the  insides 
of  a  hen.  The  remains  of  birds  or  of  animals 
are  the  **  rames,"  "  O  yes  you,  F  low  "  is 
a  common  form  of  agreement.  To  be  photo- 
graphed is  to  be  "  skitched  off,"  and  of  snap- 
shots it  is  sometimes  said  by  an  old  fisherman 
to  a  "  kodak  fiend " :  "I  heard  ye  firin'  of 
em, 

"  Cass  'n  goo,"  for  "  can't  you  go  "  may  be 
heard  at  Notre  Dame  Bay,  as  well  as  "  biss  *n 
gwine"  for  "aren't  you  going?"  and  "  thees 
cass'n  do  it"  for  "thee  can't  do  it,"  The 
berries  called  "harts"  (whorts)  are,  I  pre- 
sume, the  "  hurts  "  of  Surrey, 

A  vivid  toast  for  a  sealer  going  to  the  ice- 
fields was  "  Bloody  decks  to  'im !  " 

When  bad  weather  is  brewing,  "  We're  go- 
ing to  have  dirt "  is  a  common  expression. 

A  fisherman  who  had  hooked  a  queer  crea- 
ture that  must  have  been  first  cousin  to  the 
sea-serpent  said,  "  It  had  a  head  like  a  hulf, 
a  neck  like  a  harse;  I  cut  the  line  and  let  it 
go  to  hell." 

Here  is  a  puzzler :  "  Did  ye  come  on  skits 
or  on  cart  and  dogs  ?  "    That  means,  "  Did  you 


168  GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

come  on  skates  or  on  a  dog-sledge  ?  "  Dog- 
cat  is  a  dog-sledge.  Cat  is  short  for  cata- 
maran, which  is  not  a  sea-boat  but  a  land- 
sledge,  so  that  when  you  hear  it  said :  "  He's 
taken  his  dog  and  his  cat  and  gone  to  the 
woods  "  you  may  know  that  it  means  "  He's 
taken  his  dog  and  his  sledge." 

Just  as  we  change  the  position  of  the  r  in 
going  from  three  to  third,  we  find  the  letters 
transposed  in  "  aps  "  for  aspen,  "  haps  "  for 
hasp,  "  waps  "  for  "  wasp  "  and  "  wordle  "  for 
world.  Labrador  is  Larbador,  and  "  down  to 
the  Larbador  "  or  "  down  on  the  Larbador  " 
are  common  expressions. 

Instead  of  "  the  hatch  "  the  telescoped  form 
"th'  'atch"  is  used.  We  have  "  turr "  for 
"  tern  "  and  "  loo  "  for  "  loon,"  and  "  yam- 
mit  "  (emmet)  for  "  ant" 

The  tendency  to  combine  syllables  is  illus- 
trated in  the  pronunciation  of  Twillingate  as 
Twulngate. 

A  scaffolding  for  fish  is  known  as  a  "  flake." 
Here  the  split  cod  are  outspread  to  dry  and, 
by  the  way,  a  decision  of  the  Newfoundland 
Supreme  Court  declares  "  cod  "  and  "  fish  " 
synonymous.  The  scaffolding  is  made  of  poles 
called  longers,  and  it  is  suggested  that  these 
"  longers  "  are  the  "  longiores  "  which  Caesar 


A  WIDE,  WIDE  "  PARISH  "      159 

used  to  build  bridges,  according  to  his  Com- 
mentaries. A'  silk  hat  is  known  as  a  beaver, 
or  behaviour,  and  so  when  you  hear  it  said, 
"I  saw  Tom  Murphy;  he  must  have  been  at 
a  funeral;  he  had  his  behaviour  on,"  it  means 
not  that  he  was  circumspect  in  his  conduct, 
but  that  he  wore  the  formal  headgear. 
"  Sammy  must  '  a  '  been  writin'  some  poetry. 
I  saw  him  just  now  a-humourin'  of  it  with  his 
foot."  Cannot  you  see  the  bard  beating  out 
the  rhythm  with  his  foot,  as  a  musician  some- 
times does  when  he  is  sure  that  he  is  in  time 
and  the  rest  are  mistaken  ? 

"  South'ard,"  "  north'ard,"  "  east'ard," 
"  west'ard  "  are  current  maritime  usage,  and 
the  adjective  "  wester  "  is  heard. 

Legal  Latin  is  drawn  upon  for  "  tal  qual  " — 
talis  qualis — applied  in  a  bargain  for  fish  "  just 
as  they  come." 

Here  is  a  quaint  one.  The  end  of  a  pile, 
above  the  surface  of  a  wharf,  is  a  gump-head. 
Gump  and  block  are  one  and  the  same  thing. 
We  of  the  United  States  use  the  word 
"  gump "  or  "  chump "  figuratively  for  a 
"  blockhead." 

"  The  curse  o'  Crummle  on  ye  "  is  a  rural 
expression  still  heard,  and  refers  to  Crom- 
well's bloody  descent  on  Ireland. 


160   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

"  I  find  my  kinkhorn  and  I  can't  glutch  " 
means  "  I  have  a  pain  in  my  throat  and  I  can't 
swallow."  The  kinkhorn  is  the  Adam's  apple. 
A  man  at  Chimney  Cove  remarked :  **  I  have 
a  pain  in  my  kinkhorn  and  it  has  gone  to  my 
wizen  (chest)." 

A  dog  is  often  called  a  "crackle."  Caribou 
is  shortened  to  "  boo."  A  door  that  has  stuck 
is  said  to  be  "  plimmed  up."  A  man  who  ate 
hard  bread  and  drank  water  said  "  It  plimmed 
up  inside  and  nearly  killed  me." 

To  say  of  a  girl  that  she  "  blushed  up  like 
a  bluerag  "  refers  to  the  custom  of  enclosing 
a  lump  of  blueing  in  a  cloth  when  laundering 
clothes.  "  The  wind  baffles  round  the  house  " 
is  a  beautiful  way  of  saying  that  it  was  bluster- 
ing. 

"  Bruise  "  is  a  very  popular  dish  of  hard 
bread  boiled  with  fish,  and  with  "  scrunchins  " 
(pork)  fried  and  put  over  it.  It  is  the  equiva- 
lent of  Philadelphia's  famous  "  scrapple."  A 
guide,  admitting  that  bread  and  tea  are  the 
staple  articles  of  diet  in  many  an  outpost,  said 
reflectively :  "  Yes,  that's  all  those  people  live 
on.  Now  there's  other  things.  There's 
beans." 

When  a  man  says  that  his  hands  are  "  hard 
afrore  "   (hard  frozen)  we  remember  Milton 


A  WIDE,  WIDE  «  PARISH  "       161 

in  "  Paradise  Lost,"  "  the  air  burns  frore." 
Frozen  potatoes  are  "  frosty  tiddies."  "  Head 
is  often  called  "  heed."  "  Tigyer,"  said  by  an 
old  man  to  a  mischievous  lad,  means  "  Take 
yerself  off."  "Is  en?"  is  a  way  of  saying 
"  Is  he  ?  "  An  old  man  cut  his  finger  and 
said  that  he  had  a  "  risen  "  on  it,  which  is 
certainly  more  of  a  finality  than  a  "  rising." 
"  I'm  going  chock  to  Gargamelle  "  means  "  Fm 
going  all  the  way  to  Gargamelle,"  the  latter 
name  from  "gargon  gamelle,"  said  to  sig- 
nify "  the  boy  who  looks  after  the  soup." 

Instead  of  "  squashed,"  "  squatted "  is  a 
common  word,  as  in  the  expression  "  I 
squatted  my  finger."  And  there  are  many 
other  provincialisms  not  in  the  dictionaries. 

The  fathom  is  a  land-measure  of  length,  as 
well  as  a  sea-measure  of  depth.  The  leading 
dog  of  a  team  is  six  or  seven  "  fathoms " 
ahead  of  the  komatik. 

"  Start  calm "  means  perfectly  calm,  and 
then  they  may  say  expressively  "  The  wind's 
up  and  down  the  mast." 

"  Puddick "  is  a  common  name  for  the 
stomach. 

"  Take  it  abroad  "  is  "  take  it  apart  " ;  "  do 
you  relish  enough,"  is  '*  have  you  eaten 
plenty?"    "Poor  sign  fish"  means  that  fish 


162  GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

are  scarce.  Woods  that  are  tall  are  said  to  be 
"  taunt." 

These  few  examples  of  distinctive  phrase- 
ology  might   be   multiplied   a   thousand-fold. 

As  for  the  proper  names,  a  fascinating  field 
of  research  lies  before  a  patient  investigator 
who  commands  the  leisure.  Here  are  but  a 
few  of  countless  examples  that  might  be  cited. 

French  names  have  been  Anglicized  in 
strange  ways.  Isle  aux  Bois  thus  becomes  Isle 
of  Boys — or,  as  pronounced  on  the  south 
coast,  Oil  of  Boys  or  Oil  o'  Boy.  Baie  de 
Boules  has  lost  the  significance  of  boulders 
that  bestud  its  shores  in  the  name  Bay  Bulls. 
The  famous  and  dreaded  Cape  Race,  near  the 
spot  w^here  the  beautiful  Forizel  was  lost,  gets 
its  name  from  the  French  "  raze,"  signifying 
"sheer."  Rencontre  is  Round  Counter;  Cinq 
Isles  has  become  St.  Keels,  and  Peignoir  is  al- 
tered to  Pinware  or  Pinyare.  Grand  Bruit 
is  Grand  Brute;  the  rocky  headland  of  Blomi- 
don  that  nobly  commands  the  mouth  of  the 
Humber  is  commonly  called  Blow-me-down ; 
Roche  Blanche  is  Rose  Blanche. 

One  would  scarcely  recognize  Lance-au- 
Diable  in  Nancy  Jobble.  Bay  d'Espoir  has 
been  turned  into  its  exact  antithesis,  in  the 
shape  of  Bay  Despair.    L' Argent  Bay  is  now 


A  WIDE,  WIDE  "  PARISH  »      163 

Bay  Le  John.  Out  of  Point  Enrage  is  evolved 
Point  Rosy,  and  St.  Croix  is  modified  to  San- 
croze  (Sankrose). 

Children's  names  are  likely  to  be  Biblical. 
They  are  often  called  by  the  middle  name  as 
well — William  James,  Henry  George,  Albert 
Edward.  Merchants'  ledgers  must  take  ac- 
count of  a  vast  number  of  nicknames  that  are 
often  slight  variants  on  the  same  name — ^Yan- 
kee Peter,  Foxy  Peter,  Togo  Ben,  Sailor  Ben, 
Bucky  Ben,  Big  Tom,  Deaf  Tom,  Young  Tom, 
Big  Jan,  Little  Jan,  Susy's  Jan,  Ripple  Jan, 
Happy  Jack.  Thomas  Cluett  comes  to  be 
called  Tommy  Fiddler,  whereupon  all  the  chil- 
dren become  Fiddlers,  and  the  wife  is  Mrs. 
Fiddler.  The  family  of  Maynards  is  known 
as  the  Miners. 

The  little  boys  have  a  mischievous  way  of 
teasing  one  another  as  "bay  noddies."  The 
noddy  is  a  stupid  fish  that  is  very  good  at 
catching  the  smaller  fry  and  then  easily  allows 
itself  to  be  robbed  of  its  prey.  The  children 
cry: 

**  Bay  boy,  bay  boy,  come  to  your  supper. 
Two  cods'  heads  and  a  lump  o'  butter." 

We  find  the  children  using  instead  of 
"  Eeny,  meeny,  miny,  mo  "  this  formula : 


164  GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

"  Hiram,  Jiram,  bumbo  lock 
Six  knives  in  a  clock; 
Six  pins  turning  wins. 
Dibby,  dabby,  o-u-t  spells  out.'* 


Or; 


Or: 


Or 


"  Little  man  driving  cattle 
Don't  you  hear  his  money  rattle? 
One,  two,  sky  blue. 
Out  goes  y-o-u." 


"  Silver  lock,  silver  key. 
Touch,  go  run  away ! " 


.    "  Eetle,  ottle,  blue  bottle, 
Eetle,  ottle,  out !  " 

Still  another  is: 

"  Onery,  ury,  ickery,  Ann, 
Fillissy,  follissy,  Nicholas  John, 
Kubee,  Kowbee,  Irish  Mary 
Stinkum,  stankum,  buck  (out)." 

They  throw  marbles  against  a  wall  for  a 
sort  of  carom-shot,  and  call  it  "  bazzin'  mar- 


A  WIDE,  WIDE  "  PARISH  "       165 

bles."  "  The  real  precursor  of  the  spring,  Hke 
the  sure  mating  of  the  birds,"  said  an  old  man 
of  the  game. 

In  some  places  there  is  a  local  celebrity  with 
a  real  talent  for  the  composition  of  what  are 
known  as  "  come-all-ye's,"  from  the  fact  that 
the  minstrel  is  supposed  to  invite  all  who  will 
to  come  and  hear  him  chant  his  lay.  Every 
big  storm  or  shipwreck  is  supposed  to  be  com- 
memorated in  appropriate  verse  by  the 
laureate.  For  instance,  one  of  these  ballads 
begins : 

"  The  Lily  Joyce  stuck  in  the  ice, 
So  did  the  Husky  too; 
Captain  Bill  Ryan  left  Terry  behin' 
To  paddle  his  own  canoe." 

Another  runs  thus: 

"  'Twas  on  the  29th  of  June, 
As  all  may  know  the  same; 
The  wind  did  blow  most  wonderful, 
All  in  a  flurry  came." 

This  was  written  and  sung  to  a  hymn  tune. 
Song  is  a  common  accompaniment  of  a  ship- 
board task: 


166  GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

"  Haul    on    the    bow-line, 
Kitty  is  me  darlin'; 
Haul  on  the  bow-line, 
Haul,  boys,  haul." 

If  a  boy  doesn't  go  across  the  Straits  before 
he  is  sixteen,  he  must  be  "  shaved  by  Nep- 
tune." It  is  almost  a  disgrace  not  to  have 
gone  to  the  Labrador.  Neptune  is  called 
"  Nipkin."  "  Nipkin'Il  be  aboard  to  shave  you 
tonight." 

When  they  are  cleaning  fish,  the  last  man 
to  wash  a  fish  for  the  season  gets  ducked  in 
the  tub. 

Some  of  the  older  residents  are  walking 
epitomes  of  the  island  lore.  They  know  a 
great  deal  that  never  found  lodgment  in  books. 
Matty  Mitchell,  the  63-year  old  Micmac  guide, 
now  a  prospector  for  the  Reid-Newfoundland 
Company,  was  a  fellow-passenger  on  the  mail- 
boat.  He  was  full  of  tales  of  the  days  when 
the  wolf  still  roamed  the  island's  inner  fast- 
nesses. I  asked  him  when  the  last  of  which 
he  knew  were  at  large.  He  said :  "  About 
thirty  years  ago  I  saw  three  on  Doctor's  Hill. 
I  have  seen  none  since.  There  are  still  lots 
of  bears  and  many  lynxes.  Once  I  was  at- 
tacked by  six  wolves.  I  waited  till  the  near- 
est was  close  to  me — then  I  shoved  my  muz- 


A  WIDE,  WIDE  "  PARISH  "      167 

zle-Ioader  into  his  mouth  and  shot  him  and  the 
other  five  fell  away.  Another  time  I  was 
attacked  by  three  bears  who  drove  me  into 
a  lake  where  I  had  to  stay  till  some  men  who 
had  been  with  me  came  to  the  rescue. 

"  My  grandfather  was  with  Peyton  when 
Mary  March  and  another  Indian  woman  were 
captured  at  Indian  Lake.  Mary  March  died 
at  St.  John's,  and  was  buried  there;  the  other 
one  was  brought  back  to  the  shore  of  the 
lake." 

"  How  do  you  know  what  minerals  you 
are  finding  when  you  are  prospecting'?"  I 
asked. 

"  I  was  three  times  in  the  Museum  at  St. 
John's,"  he  answered.  "J  see  everything  in 
the  place.  That  way  I  know  everything  that 
I  look  at  when  I  go  to  hunt  for  minerals  and 
metals.  I  hear  a  thing  once — I  got  it.  I  see 
a  thing  once — I  got  it.  I  never  found  gold — 
but  I  got  pearls  from  clams,  weighing  as  much 
as  forty  grains.  I  can't  stay  in  the  house.  I 
must  be  out  in  the  open.  If  I  stay  inside  I 
get  sick.  I  take  colds.  I've  been  twice  to  the 
Grand  Falls  in  Labrador.  At  the  upper  falls 
the  river  rises  seven  times  so " — he  arched 
the  back  of  his  hand — "before  the  water  goes 
over.    The  biggest  flies  I  ever  saw  are  there. 


168  GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

They  bite  right  through  the  clothes.  You 
close  the  tent — sew  up  the  opening.  You  burn 
up  all  the  flies  inside.  Next  morning  there  are 
just  as  many." 

Another  passenger  was  the  Rev.  Thomas 
Greavett,  Church  of  England  "  parson,"  with 
a  parish  loo  miles  long  on  the  West  Coast 
between  Cow  Head  and  Flower's  Cove.  He 
had  to  be  medicine-man  and  lawyer  too,  and 
in  his  black  satchel  he  carried  a  stomach-pump, 
a  syringe,  eight  match-boxes  of  medicine  and 
Gibbon's  "Decline  and  Fall."  He  told  me 
how  he  hated  to  use  the  mail-boat  for  his 
parish  visiting,  for  it  generally  meant  sleep- 
less nights  of  pacing  the  deck  or  sitting  in  the 
lifeboat  in  default  of  a  berth.  He  carried  a 
petition,  to  go  before  the  Legislature,  reciting 
the  many  reasons  why  the  poor  little  boat  on 
which  we  were  travelling  is  inadequate  to  the 
heavy  freight  and  passenger  traffic  in  which  she 
is  engaged.  With  accommodations  for  hardly 
more  than  50  passengers,  she  has  carried  210, 
235  and  even  300,  which  meant  acute  discom- 
fort for  everybody  and  the  open  deck,  night 
and  day,  for  many  passengers.  What  is 
wanted  is  a  big,  heavy  ice-breaker.  The  Ethie 
never  was  meant  by  her  Glasgow  builders  to 
fight  the  Humboldt   Glacier  bit  by  bit  as  it 


A  WIDE,  WIDE  "  PARISH  "      169 

'falls  into  the  sea.  In  December  she  was 
wrecked  off  Cow  Head  in  a  gale,  fortunately 
with  no  loss  of  life. 

I  don't  know  of  a  harder-working  lot  than 
the  crew  and  captain  of  a  boat  that  undertakes 
to  carry  freight  and  passengers  between 
southern  ports  of  Newfoundland  and  the 
Labrador. 

Take  the  experience  of  this  vessel,  the  Ethie, 
in  the  summer  of  19 19  as  an  example.  Under 
a  thoroughly  capable  and  chart-perfect  skip- 
per, Captain  English,  she  made  several  inef- 
fectual attempts  to  get  to  Battle  Harbour 
through  the  dense  ice-jam  before  she  finally 
made  that  roadstead  on  June  24.  When  I 
met  her  at  Curling  to  go  north,  a  week  late, 
at  the  end  of  August,  she  had  just  come  out 
of  a  viscous  fog  of  four  days'  duration  in 
the  Strait  of  Belle  Isle  and  in  that  fog  she  had 
escaped  by  the  closest  of  shaves  a  collision 
with  a  berg  that  towered  above  her  till  the 
top  of  it  was  lost  in  the  fog.  She  carried  so 
many  passengers,  short-haul  or  long-distance, 
that  every  seat  in  the  dining  saloon  was  filled 
with  weary  folk  at  night  and  some  paced  the 
decks  or  sat  on  the  piles  of  lathes  or  the  oil- 
barrels.  Lumber  and  barrels  were  stored 
cverjrwhere,  the  hold  was  crammed,  and  cattle 


170  GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

in  the  prow  came  and  went  mysteriously  as 
the  vessel  moved  into  one  cove  or  bight  or 
tickle  after  another  in  the  dead  of  the  night 
or  the  silver  cool  of  the  early  morning.  The 
clatter  of  the  steam-winch  with  the  tune  of 
babies  strange  to  the  sea-trip,  the  slap  and 
scuffle  of  the  waves  on  our  sheet-iron  sides 
and  the  banging  of  the  doors  as  the  vessel 
writhed  in  her  discomfort  made  an  orchestra 
of  many  tongues  and  percussions.  The  boat 
was  so  heavy  with  her  cargo  of  machinery, 
oil,  lumber,  flour  ($24  a  barrel  at  Battle  Har- 
bour), cattle  and  human  beings  that  the  deck 
outside  my  stateroom  was  hardly  two  feet 
out  of  water.  There  were  four  of  us  in  the 
stateroom,  but  the  population  changed  almost 
hourly  from  port  to  port,  so  that  I  had  barely 
time  to  get  acquainted  with  a  fellow-passenger 
ere  I  lost  him  to  look  after  his  lobster  or  fish, 
or  his  missionary  labours.  One  of  the  ship's 
company  was  going  to  teach  school  at  Green 
Island  Cove  at  the  northern  tip  of  Newfound- 
land. He  told  me  he  would  get  $275  for  ten 
months*  work  and  out  of  it  would  have  to  pay 
board.  Yet  out  of  that  salary  he  meant  to 
put  by  money  to  pay  for  part  of  a  college 
education  at  St.  John's.  "  How  old  are  you  ?  " 
I  asked.    "  Not  yet  eighteen,  sir." 


A  WIDE,  WIDE  "  PARISH  "      171 

It  is  easy  to  see  why  Dr.  Grenfell's  heart 
and  hand  go  out  in  a  practical  and  helpful 
sympathy  to  those  whose  battle  with  grim,  un- 
mitigated natural  forces  and  with  harsh  cir- 
cumstance is  unending.  The  commonest  ques- 
tion asked  of  anyone  who  returns  from  a  visit 
to  the  Labrador  is  "  Why  do  people  live 
there?  "  Despite  the  fog  and  the  cold,  the  sea- 
perils  and  the  stark  barrenness  of  the  rocks, 
the  Labrador  has  an  allurement  all  its  own. 
It  has  brought  a  sturdy  explorer  like  William 
B.  Cabot  of  Boston  ("Labrador"  Cabot) 
again  and  again  to  the  rivers  and  inlets  and  the 
central  fastnesses,  where  he  shares  the  life  of 
the  Montagnais  and  the  Nauscapee  Indians; 
and  the  same  magic  has  endeared  the  Labrador 
to  those  who  year  upon  year  continue  the  quest 
of  the  cod  and  the  seal  and  know  no  life  other 
than  this. '  Whatever  place  a  man  calls  his 
home  is  likely  to  become  unreasonably  dear  to 
him,  however  bare  and  poor  it  looks  to  visi- 
tors; and  that  is  the  way  with  the  Labrador. 
But  he  who  cannot  find  by  sea  or  land  a  wild 
and  terrible  beauty  in  the  waters  and  the  lu- 
minous skies  and  the  long  roll  and  lift  of  the 
blue  hills  must  be  insensible  to  some  of  the 
fairest  vistas  that  earth  has  to  show.  Grenfell 
and  his  colleagues  do  not  concede  that  life  on 


172   GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

the  Labrador  is  dull  or  that  the  environment  is 
sterile  and  monotonous  and  cheerless.  As  one 
of  the  brave  Labrador  missionaries,  the 
Rev.  Henry  Gordon,  has  written,  "  Not  only 
does  Labrador  rejoice  in  some  of  the  finest 
scenery  in  North  America,  but  she  also  pos- 
sesses a  people  of  an  exceptionally  fine  type." 
Surely  it  is  not  right  to  think  of  such  a 
country  as  a  land  only  of  rocks,  snows  and 
misery. 


XIII 
A  FEW  "  PARISHIONERS  *' 

ATYPICAL  interior  gladdened  by  the 
Doctor's  presence  is  this  on  the 
Southern  Labrador.  A  drudge  from 
Nancy  Jobble  (Lance  au  Diable)  is  scrubbing 
the  floor,  for  the  mother  is  too  ill  to  look  to 
the  ways  of  her  household.  The  drudge  in- 
stead of  singing  is  chewing  on  something  that 
may  be  tobacco,  paper  or  gum,  and  as  she 
slings  the  brush  about  heartlessly  she  gives 
furtive  eyes  and  ears  to  the  visitors.  The 
walls  are  bestuck  with  staled  and  yellowed 
newspapers.  There  are  no  pictures  or  books. 
There  is  a  wooden  bench  before  the  linoleum- 
covered  table,  on  which  are  loaves  of  bread, 
ill-baked.  There  is  a  stove,  of  the  "  Fa- 
vourite "  brand  with  kettle  and  teapot  sim- 
mering. A  tarnished  alarm-clock  from  An- 
sonia,  a  mirror,  a  wash-stand,  shelves  with 
china,  tin  cans  and  shreds  of  bread,  a  baby's 
crib,  a  rocking-chair  and  two  more  benches 
173 


174.  GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

forlornly  complete  the  inventory.  There  is 
nothing  green  in  sight  from  the  besmirched 
windows  but  grass  and  people. 

A  telegraph  operator  was  reading  a  volume 
of  the  addresses  of  Russell  Con  well  when  we 
entered  his  not  overtasked  laboratory.  The 
book  bore  the  title  "  How  to  Get  Rich  Hon- 
estly." "  'Fraid  I'll  never  get  any  further  than 
reading  about  it!"  exclaimed  the  man  of  the 
keys  and  wires.  Dr.  Grenfell  took  the  book 
and  presently  became  engrossed  in  the  famous 
address  called  "  Acres  of  Diamonds."  It 
seemed  to  him  the  sort  of  literature  to  fire 
the  ambition  of  his  neighbours  under  the 
Northern  Lights,  with  its  instances  of  those 
who  made  their  way  defiant  of  the  odds  and 
in  spite  of  all  opposition. 

A  very  young  minister  at  another  Labrador 
watering-place  said  to  the  Doctor :  "  You 
needn't  leave  any  of  your  books  here.  I'm  not 
interested  in  libraries.  I'm  only  interested  in 
the  spiritual  welfare  of  the  people." 

A  run  of  six  miles  by  power-boat  across 
Lewis  Inlet  took  us  to  Fox  Harbour  and  the 
house  of  Uncle  George  Holley.  In  recent 
years  the  power-boat,  even  with  gasoline  at 
the  prevailing  high  prices,  has  become  the 
fisherman's  taxicab  or  tin  Lizzie,  and  Oh!  the 


A  FEW  "  PARISHIONERS  '*       175 

difference  to  him.  He  bobs  and  prances  out 
over  the  war-dance  of  the  waves  with  his 
barrels  and  boxes  easily,  where  once  it  was  a 
mighty  toiling  with  the  sweeps  to  make  his 
way.  The  run  across  the  inlet  went  swiftly 
and  surely  past  an  iceberg  white  as  an  angel's 
wing  though  with  the  malign  suggestion  of  the 
devil  behind  it:  and  there  were  plenty  of 
chances  to  take  photographs  from  every  pos- 
sible angle. 

Uncle  George  had  on  the  stage  a  skinned 
seal,  some  whalemeat,  salted  cod  and  a  few 
barrels  of  salmon.  His  wife  showed  us  a 
tiny  garden  with  cabbages,  lettuce,  rhubarb, 
radishes  and  "  greens."  One  year,  she  said, 
she  had  a  barrel  of  potatoes.  Indoors  she 
managed  to  raise  balsam,  bachelor's  buttons 
and  nasturtiums.  Nowhere  in  the  world  do 
flowers  mean  more  to  those  that  plant  them. 
Constantly  there  comes  to  mind  H.  C.  Brun- 
ner's  poem  about  a  geranium  upon  a  window- 
sill:  for  the  flowers  which  it  needs  incessant 
care  to  keep  from  the  nipping  frost  come  to 
be  regarded  as  not  merely  friends  but  mem- 
bers of  the  family.  Uncle  George,  a  fine, 
patriarchal  type,  told  vividly  how  with  a  dog 
whip  nine  fathoms  long  the  expert  hand  could 
cut  off  the  neck  of  a  glass  bottle  without  up- 


176  GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

setting  the  bottle,  and  take  the  bowl  from  a 
man's  pipe  or  the  buttons  off  his  coat.  No 
wonder  the  huskies  slink  under  the  houses 
when  they  see  a  stranger  coming. 

The  winter  of  191 8- 19  was  especially  terri- 
ble— or  "  wonderful "  as  would  be  said  here — 
because  of  the  visitation  of  the  "  flu."  Con- 
ditions were  bad  enough  in.  Newfoundland, 
but  in  Labrador  the  "  liveyers  "  (those  who 
remain  the  year  round)  fought  their  battles 
in  a  hopeless  isolation  illumined  by  heroic 
self-abnegation  on  the  part  of  a  tiny  handful 
of  persons. 

When  spring  released  the  Labrador  Coast 
from  the  grip  of  the  ice,  and  the  tragic  tale 
of  the  winter  was  told,  the  Newfoundland 
Government  dispatched  the  Terra  Nova 
(Scott's  Antarctic  vessel)  to  the  aid  of  the 
afflicted.  Then  news  filtered  out  to  the  world 
of  plague  conditions  during  that  terrible  winter 
more  dreadful  than  those  which  De  Foe  has 
chronicled.  While  reading  the  gruesome  de- 
tails, one  is  reminded  of  the  long,  lonely  and 
hopeless  fight  of  the  early  Jamestown  colony 
agains^t  sickness  and  starvation.  Throughout 
the  bitter  months  the  Red  Death  stalked  its 
dread  way  up  and  down  the  Coast,  with  almost 
no  doctors,  nurses  or  medicines  to  check  the 


A  FEW  "  PARISHIONERS  »       177 

di3ease.  Whole  families  were  stricken,  the 
living  were  too  weak  to  bury  the  dead  or  even 
to  fight  off  the  gaunt  dogs  that  hovered  hun- 
grily about  the  houses ;  and  hamlets  were  wiped 
out  while  neighbouring  villages  were  unable 
to  send  aid. 

A  few  sentences  from  the  diary  of  Henry 
Gordon,  the  brave  missionary  at  Cartwright, 
on  Sandwich  Bay,  will  suffice  to  show  what  a 
hideous  winter  his  people  passed  through.  Of 
this  man  Dr.  Grenfell  said  to  me :  "  InsteJad 
of  a  stick  with  a  collar  on  it  we  have  a  man 
with  a  soul  in  him."  He  is  always  laughing — 
incurably  an  optimist,  and  a  great  Boy  Scout 
leader.    The  following  are  condensed  excerpts. 

"Wednesday,  Oct.  30,  19 18.  Reached 
Cartwright  8  a.m.  Mail-boat  had  brought 
*  the  great  Plague '  and  nearly  half  the  popu- 
lation was  down  with  it. 

"Thursday,  Oct,  31.  Nearly  everybody 
down  now. 

"  Nov.  I.  Whole  households  stretched  in- 
animate on  floors,  unable  even  to  feed  them- 
selves or  keep  fires  going. 

"  Nov.  2.  Feeling  rotten.  Head  like  a 
bladderful  of  wind. 

"  Nov,  7.  Busy  all  a.m.  arranging  graves 
and  coffins. 

"  Nov.  8.    Gale  N.  E.  with  snow-storms. 


178  GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

"  Nov.  17.  Two  of  bodies  too  much 
doubled  up  to  put  in  coffin. 

"Nov.  21.  Will  Lean,/.:-;J  in  from  Indian 
Harbour  with  news  that  ten  are  dead  at  North 
River  still  unburied  and  only  three  coffins. 
The  rest  are  too  sick  and  dismayed  to  help. 

"Nov.  22.  (At  North  River).  Some  had 
lain  in  their  beds  three  weeks  and  the  stench 
was  appalling.  Old  Mrs.  L.  W.,  aged  71,  only 
survivor  of  five,  lived  alone  for  a  fortnight 
with  four  dead.  No  fire,  no  wood,  only  ice, 
which  she  thawed  under  her  arms. 

"  Nov.  26.  Number  burials  now  totals  26. 
Population  little  over  100. 

"  Dec.  14.  Find  five  little  orphans  living 
alone  in  a  deserted  house  in  a  deserted  cove, 
bread  still  frozen. 

"  Dec.  19.  12  dead  in  North  River  out  of 
population  of  21. 

"Dec.  25.  (Christmas  Day).  Service 
10.30.  Only  six  communicants,  but  consider- 
able *  Communion  of  saints.* 

"Jan.  I,  1919.  (At  Cape  Porcupine,  in 
Herbert  Emb's  one-room  house).  *  A  sort  of 
damp  earthy  smell  met  one  on  entering,  but 
thanks  to  frost,  body  was  not  so  bad  as  ex- 
pected. More  like  mouldering  clay  than  any- 
thing.    Right  on  his  side  was  his  little  girl, 


A  FEW  "  PARISHIONERS  "      179 

actually  frozen  on  to  him,  so  that  bodies  came 
off  the  bunk  in  one  piece.' 

"Jan.  3.     C       e-blasting. 

"Jan.  8.  Total  deaths:  ^artwright,  15; 
Paradise,  20;  Separation  P6'mt,  7;  North 
River,  13;  Strandshore,  9;  Grady,  i;  Hare 
Islands,  4;  Sandhills,  4;  Boulter's  Rock,  5; 
North,  12." 

These  do  not  seem  large  figures,  but  in 
settlements  of  half  a  dozen  houses  or  less  they 
represent  a  very  large  proportion  of  the  in- 
habitants. 

News  of  the  armistice  with  Germany  did  not 
reach  Mr.  Gordon  until  January  9,  which 
shows  how  far  from  the  world  was  this  region 
within  a  hundred  miles  of  the  summer  hospital 
at  Battle  Harbour. 

It  is  to  be  noted  that  nearly  all  the  children 
who  died  perished  of  starvation,  because  their 
elders  could  no  longer  feed  them  and  the 
"  loaf  "  was  too  frozen  to  be  eaten. 

The  Eskimo  settlements  suffered  still  more 
grievously.  The  bodies  were  buried  at  sea. 
Dogs  were  eating  the  bodies,  and  had  to  be 
shot.  Sometimes  the  survivors  were  too  weak 
to  drive  the  dogs  from  the  dead  and  the 
dying. 

Hebron  was  wiped  out.    At  Okkak  200  died 


180  GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

of  267,  and  on  August  15  there  were  four 
widows  and  two  little  girls  left,  who  were 
waiting  to  be  taken  away.  Nain  was  not  so 
hard  hit,  but  it  is  said  that  forty  perished  out 
of  several  hundred.  Zoar  and  Ramah  had 
already  passed  out  of  existence  before  the 
"  flu  "  came.  It  is  estimated  that  the  resident 
Eskimo  population  on  the  coast,  numbering 
600  to  700,  was  cut  nearly  in  half. 

The  people  seem  to  thing  that  Dr.  Grenfell 
can  accomplish  miracles.  One  is  reminded  of 
the  words  of  the  sister  of  Lazarus,  "  Lor(|^ 
if  thou  hadst  been  here,  my  brother  had  not 
died." 

"  Richard  Dempster,  our  mail-carrier,"  said 
good  Parson  Richards,  of  Flower's  Cove, 
"  owes  his  life  to  the  Doctor.  Something  had 
infected  his  knee.  The  poison  spread  to  his 
hip.  He  wouldn't  have  lived  twelve  hours  if 
the  Doctor  hadn't  made  seven  incisions  in  his 
right  leg  with  his  pocket-knife  to  let  out  the 
poisoned  blood. 

"  Once  when  I  was  travelling  with  him,  at 
Pine's  Cove  we  found  a  family  had  left  because 
the  woman  had  seen  a  ghost.  The  Doctor 
prayed  with  her,  and  offered  to  go  and  live  in 
the  house  himself  to  prove  that  she  was  the  vic- 
tim of  an  illusion.    At  Eddy's  Cove  there  was 


A  FEW  "  PARISHIONERS  "       181 

hard  glitter  ice  which  would  have  cut  the  dog's 
paws.  We  thought  we  couldn't  go  on.  While 
we  debated  what  to  do  there  came  a  snowfall 
that  spread  the  ice  with  a  glorious  soft  blanket, 
ideal  for  travel.  That's  just  the  way  Provi- 
dence always  seems  to  favour  the  Doctor  when 
he  goes  abroad. 

"  That  man  never  came  to  the  parsonage  and 
went  without  leaving  me  with  the  desire  to  do 
better  and  be  better.  Every  single  time  it 
was  the  same. 

"  Once  we  were  on  the  go  with  the  dogs  and 
the  komatik  four  days  from  St.  Anthony  to 
Cricket  (Griguet).  Much  of  the  time  the 
Doctor  had  to  run  beside  the  komatik.  He 
struck  out  a  new  way,  deep  in  snow.  *  Don't 
you  ever  get  tired.  Doctor?  '  I  asked.  '  I  don't 
know  that  I  ever  was  tired  in  my  life,'  was  his 
answer. 

"  A  day  or  two  aft£r  that  dreadful  ex- 
perience on  the  ice-pan  which  he  described  in 
a  book,  he  was  at  Cricket,  and  I  went  to  see 
him.  He  was  still  suffering  from  the  effects 
of  the  frost-bite.  *  Will  you  come  to  the  mass 
meeting  of  the  churches  tonight?'  I  said.  He 
didn't  hesitate  a  moment.  '  Yes — send  a  dog- 
team  and  I'll  come.'  He  not  merely  came  but 
delivered  an  address  of  an  hour's  duration, 


182  GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

and  I  never  heard  him  speak  with  greater 
fervour.  He  seemed  spiritualized  by  the  ex- 
perience through  which  he  had  so  recently 
passed." 


XIV 

NEEDS,    BIG   AND   LITTLE 

IT  is  high  time  to  give  Dr.  Grenfell's  great 
work  the  broad,  sure  underpinning  of  a 
liberal  endowment.  It  may  be  true  that 
"  an  institution  is  the  lengthened  shadow  of 
one  man";  but  the  one-man  power  of  Gren- 
fell's personality  is  not  immortal,  and  the  work 
is.  too  important  to  be  allowed  to  lapse  or  to 
languish  when  he  no  longer  directs,  inspires 
and  energizes  all.  To  endow  the  work  now, 
when  many  concerns  of  lesser  moment  are 
claiming  their  millions  of  dollars  and  their 
thousands  of  devotees  is  to  relieve  the  Doctor 
of  the  ordeal  of  stumping  the  United  States, 
Canada  and  the  British  Isles  to  keep  his  great 
plant  going.  Despite  the  volunteer  assistants, 
despite  the  aid  of  good  men  and  women  banded 
in  associations  or  toiling  in  groups  or  as  in- 
dividuals at  points  far  from  Battle  Harbour 
and  St.  Anthony,  despite  the  economy  prac- 
tised everywhere  and  always,  there  is  ever  a 
183 


184  GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

need,  a  haunting  need,  of  funds;  and  a  few 
insular  politicians  and  traders  may  talk  as 
elaborately  as  they  please  about  Grenfell  as  an 
interloper,  with  a  task  that  does  not  belong  to 
him,  but  as  long  as  Newfoundland  does  not 
provide  a  sufficient  subsidy,  most  of  the  money 
must  come  from  somewhere  off  the  island.  I 
have  heard  some  "  little-islanders "  say  that 
Dr.  Grenfell  ought  to  get  out,  and  that  New- 
foundland should  take  over  his  whole  busi- 
ness, but  as  long  as  Newfoundland  does  not 
move  to  that  end,  and  there  is  a  woeful  want 
of  doctoring  and  nursing  at  any  outport  on 
the  map,  somebody  with  the  flaming  zeal  of 
this  crusader  has  a  place.  Grenfell  is  doing 
the  work  not  of  one  man  but  of  a  hundred. 
Could  his  cured  patients  have  their  say,  there 
would  be  no  doubt  about  that  endowment.  If 
grateful  words  were  dollars,  Grenfell  would 
be  a  multi-millionaire. 

It  should  not  be  necessary  to  explain  in  cir- 
cumstantial detail  the  constant  and  pressing 
need  of  funds  to  carry  on  an  enterprise  that 
covers  so  large  a  territory  and  involves  so 
many  and  such  various  activities.  A  chain  of 
hospitals  and  dispensaries,  manned  in  large 
part  by  eager  and  devoted  volunteers,  an  or- 
phanage,   an    industrial    school,    a    fleet    of 


NEEDS,  BIG  AND  LITTLE        185 

boats — including  the  schooner  George  B. 
Cluett — a  Seamen's  Institute,  a  number  of 
dwellings  for  the  staff  personnel,  the  supplies 
of  food  and  coal  and  surgical  apparatus  and 
medical  equipment — all  these  items  impose  a 
burden  on  the  overtaxed  time  and  strength  of 
the  Doctor  so  considerable  that  it  is  not  even 
humane  or  moral  to  expect  him  to  speak  two 
or  three  times  a  day  as  he  does  when  he  ought 
to  be  taking  a  well-earned  vacation.  Count- 
less thousands  are  eager  to  hear  the  man  him- 
self describe  his  work,  and  there  is  usually  a 
throng  whenever  and  wherever  he  appears, 
but  to  let  him  wear  himself  out  in  appealing 
for  the  means  to  carry  on  is  a  waste  of  the 
enormous  man-power  of  a  great  leader  of  the 
age.  He  does  not  cavil  or  repine,  but  he  ought 
to  be  saved  from  his  own  willingness  to 
overdo. 

"  I  never  put  up  a  building  without  having 
the  funds  in  hand,"  he  declared.  **  But  when 
it  comes  to  work — I  believe  in  beginning  first 
and  asking  afterwards.  The  support  will 
somehow  come,  if  there  is  faith,  but  faint- 
heartedness means  paralysis  of  effort." 

One  of  the  most  important  producers  and 
consumers  of  all  Dr.  Grenfell's  institutions  is 
the  King  George  V.  Seamen's  Institute  at  St. 


186  GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

John's.  The  cornerstone  of  the  four-story 
brick  building  was  laid  in  191 1.  Sir  Ralph 
iWilliams  (the  Governor),  Bowring  Brothers, 
Job  Brothers,  Harvey  and  Company,  Mac- 
Pherson  Brothers  and  other  loyal  and  for- 
ward-looking citizens  got  behind  the  plan :  and 
when  the  stone  was  swung  into  place  by  wire 
from  Buckingham  Palace  as  King  George  V. 
pressed  the  button,  the  sum  of  $175,000  was  in 
hand.  The  site  contributed  by  Bowring 
Brothers  was  valued  at  $13,000. 

The  enumeration  of  beds  occupied,  meals 
served,  baths  taken,  games  played,  books 
loaned,  films  shown  and  lectures  heard  does 
not  begin  to  tell  the  story.  Fishermen  and 
sailormen  ashore  are  traditionally  forlorn. 
Men  from  the  outports  who  drift  into  St. 
John's  are  like  country  lads  who  come  wide- 
eyed  to  a  great  city.  It  is  not  morally  so  bad 
for  them  as  it  was  ere  prohibition  came  and 
clamped  the  lid  upon  the  gin-mills.  But  still, 
these  are  lonely  men,  friendless  men,  with 
very  little  money:  and  the  Institute  has  a 
helping  hand  out  for  them,  to  befriend  them 
from  the  moment  they  set  foot  on  shore. 
Moreover,  there  is  a  dormitory  given  over  to 
the  use  of  outport  girls:  since  it  is  seen  that 
hard  as  things  may  be  for  Jack  ashore  they  are 


NEEDS,  BIG  AND  LITTLE        187 

harder  yet  for  sister  Jill,  who  knows  even  less 
of  the  great  round  world  outside  the  bay  and 
needs  even  more  protection  than  her  brother. 

The  Institute  at  last  is  able  to  show  a  small 
balance  on  the  right  side  of  the  ledger.  Since 
the  first  thought  of  those  who  ran  it  has  been 
service,  they  are  satisfied  to  come  out  only  a 
little  better  than  even.  No  charge  of  graft 
or  profiteering  lies  here :  and  those  who  are  fed 
and  housed  and  warmed  find  it  "a  little  bit 
of  heaven  "  to  be  made  so  comfortable  at  an 
expense  so  small. 

At  the  start,  less  than  a  decade  ago,  there 
were  croakers  who  said  there  would  be  but  a 
slim  and  scattering  patronage :  but  now  nearly 
all  the  beds  are  in  use  every  night.  In  the 
dread  influenza  year,  191 8,  the  Institute  was 
invaluable  as  an  Emergency  Hospital,  which 
treated  267  patients.  The  city  hospital  at  St. 
John's  is  small  and  always  overcrowded.  If 
the  Institute  had  not  been  available  the  results 
of  the  epidemic  would  have  been  still  more 
terrible.  When  in  February,  19 18,  the 
Florisel  was  wrecked  on  the  coast  between  St. 
John's  and  Cape  Race  the  survivors  were 
brought  here,  and  the  Institute  also  prepared 
the  bodies  of  the  dead  for  burial.  And  on 
other  occasions  it  has  done  good  service. 


188  GRENFELL  ON  THE  LABRADOR 

Demobilized  men  of  the  Army  and  Navy 
coming  into  town  from  the  outports  use  the 
building  as  a  clubhouse. 

Since  the  high  cost  of  living  has  not  spared 
Newfoundland,  the  rate  for  the  young  women 
who  are  permanent  boarders  has  had  to  be 
raised  to  $4.00  a  week.  In  parts  of  New- 
foundland that  is  a  good  deal  of  money,  but 
it  is  not  much  compared  with  what  these  girls 
would  have  to  pay  in  the  absence  of  the  In- 
stitute. 

The  successful  operation  of  the  Institute 
is  an  outstanding  object-lesson,  and  a  source 
of  particular  satisfaction  to  its  founder  and 
chief  promoter.  It  has  triumphantly  answered 
and  silenced  the  objections  of  those  who  at  the 
start  declared  that  the  only  possible  result 
would  be  calamitous  failure.  It  has  survived 
the  shock  of  the  discovery  that  some  of  its 
earlier  administrators  were  unworthy  of  their 
charge;  it  has  outlived  the  era  of  struggle  and 
set-back ;  it  has  so  clearly  proved  its  place  and 
its  meaning  in  the  community  where  it  is  es- 
tablished that  if  it  were  destroyed  the  mer- 
chants themselves  would  be  prompt  to  under- 
take its  replacement.  It  is  as  impressive  a 
monument  as  any  to  the  enduring  worth  of  the 


NEEDS,  BIG  AND  LITTLE        189 

devoted  labours  of  Wilfred  Thomason  Gren- 
fcll,  and  as  conspicuous  a  proof  as  could  be 
oflfered  that  his  great  work  by  land  and  sea 
deserves  an  Endowment  Fund. 


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